If You Seek Amy

When we get our first glimpse of Amy Adams in Sunshine Cleaning, she’s standing in the cluttered kitchen of a big house while a pool party carries on outside. She’s not a guest of the party — she’s there as a cleaning woman, the pink polo shirt with the “PRETTY CLEAN” logo on it making her skin seem even more wan and colourless than usual. Soon, a teenaged girl comes into the kitchen from the pool to get something to drink, and Adams makes an awkward stab at conversation: “It’s a real rager out there, huh?” The girl doesn’t say anything in response; she just shoots Adams a quick, contemptuous glance and heads back outside. It’s here that director Christine Jeffs and editor Heather Persons do a smart thing: instead of cutting away from the scene, they let the camera sit there and register the look of hurt that crosses Adams’ face, which she then quickly covers up with a brave little smile. Soldiering onward!

That willingness to seem innocent, vulnerable, and maybe even a little ridiculous has always been one of Adams’ great strengths as an actor. She may not have displayed the widest range so far in her career, but if you want to be a movie star, range is a lot less important than sheer likability. (If range were all that mattered, Vera Farmiga would be making $5 million a picture by now.) Philip Seymour Hoffman has a scene in Doubt where he tells Adams’ wide-eyed nun Sister James that he can tell she’s a kind, gentle person just from looking at her — and that line could apply to every character Adams plays. It’s one of the rules of moviegoing: you root for Amy Adams to be happy. Her eyes get so red when she cries, after all.

In Sunshine Cleaning, Adams plays Rose Lorkowski, a single mom scraping by on the cash she makes working for a maid service in Albuquerque. (Rhymes with “quirky”!) In need of some quick cash to send her son to private school, her cop boyfriend (Steve Zahn) tips her off about a lucrative line of work: cleaning up crime scenes. She hires her fuck-up kid sister Norah (Emily Blunt), prints up some business cards, takes out an ad in the local Penny Saver, and soon Sunshine Cleaning is in business.

The obvious movie to compare Sunshine Cleaning to is Little Miss Sunshine; besides the similar title and the general air of Sundance-friendly indie quirk, both movies feature Alan Arkin as an irascible senior who knows how to talk to grandkids, a broken-down van, and characters who recite motivational speeches to themselves in a futile attempt to convince themselves that everything will turn out fine with just a little positive thinking. But it reminded me more strongly of Adrienne Shelly’s Waitress — another charming little dramedy that, despite its occasionally arch comic moments, took a sincere interest in its heroine’s attempts to carve out an independent life for herself. (It’s probably no coincidence that the creative team on both films was predominantly female.)

Not that being compared to Little Miss Sunshine is anything to be embarrassed by, in my opinion. I realize it’s not a film that tougher-minded critics have much respect for, and I don’t blame them for rolling their eyes at some of its bigger plot contrivances. But there are plenty of classic comedies from the ’30s and ’40s filled with just as many convenient coincidences and self-consciously quirky characters. I mean, come on: if You Can’t Take It With You can win Best Picture, why can’t we cut the much superior Little Miss Sunshine or Sunshine Cleaning a little slack?

Am I sounding defensive? Maybe I am — I guess I know it would be very easy for someone to point to the scene in Sunshine Cleaning where Amy Adams uses a CB radio to have an imaginary conversation with her dead mother, or to the use of the beyond-clichéd “Spirit in the Sky” over the closing montage and ask me how I could possibly defend them. I picture myself sitting awkwardly, like Rose Lorkowski at the baby shower of an old high school friend, describing how she spends her day cleaning up biohazards and mopping up blood. The more sensible critics wrinkle their noses in disgust, just like the women talking to Rose. “You like that stuff?” they ask incredulously. And, like Rose, I get a daffy look on my face as it occurs to me that yes, yes, I do like that stuff.