There are just enough parallels between “Sunshine Cleaning” and “Little Miss Sunshine” to smudge ever so slightly this tale of the sisters Lorkowski, set in Albuquerque.
Echoes begin with the title, extend to the fact the script was bought by the folks who distributed 2006’s sleeper hit, and extend again with the casting of Alan Arkin as the prickly grandfather of an oddster young’un.
These overlaps rob this story — about siblings who begin to find themselves once they launch a crime-scene cleaning business — of some of its offbeat surprise.
But thanks to the elbow grease of Amy Adams and Emily Blunt, they can’t muck up the more pained and touching insights.
A former high school cheerleader, Rose (Adams) works for a housekeeping service. She trysts with her high school beau (Steve Zahn plays the one-time star quarterback, now police detective) in a motel. Rose’s son, Oscar, is developing quirks that force her to consider private school and a new career path.
Clueless about biohazard waste disposal, the sisters hang out a shingle, roll up their sleeves, hold their noses. The work they undertake is strictly post- CSI. They arrive after, or just as, the cops are pulling down the crime-scene tape and moving on.
Blunt and Adams make convincing sisters, mixing need with frustration, love with exhaustion.
One story thread has Norah (Blunt) pursuing a woman whose pictures she finds at a sorrowful scene. Mary Lynn Rajskub brings lovely caution to the character of Lynn.
Another finds Rose making a connection with the owner of a cleaning-supplies store, played with muted magnetism by Clifton Collins Jr.
“We made it better. We made it right,” says Rose after their first job. Adams delivers the line with such tenderness, it suggests a calling. It turns out to be one.
Credit director Christine Jeffs and writer Megan Holley with revealing the sisters’ pained back story ever so gently.
“Sunshine Cleaning”
Directed by Christine Jeffs; written by Megan Holley; photography by John Toon; starring Amy Adams, Emily Blunt, Alan Arkin, Steve Zahn, Jason Spevack, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Clifton Collins Jr. Rated R for language, disturbing images, some sexuality and drug use. 92 minutes. Opens today the Mayan.
