Dir. Christine Jeffs, US, 2008, 91mins
Cast:
Amy Adams, Emily Blunt, Alan Arkin
Review by
Carol Allen
Although stories of sibling antagonism are not unusual, the setting for this one certainly is. Once the star of the high school cheerleading team, life has since gone downhill for Rose (Adams), a single mum who scrapes a living as a skivvy, cleaning other people's houses, while conducting an unsatisfactory affair with her now married high school sweetheart (Steve Zahn). Her younger sister Norah (Blunt), who doesn't do anything very much, still lives at home with their widowed father (Arkin), whose get rich quick schemes always come a cropper. And Rose and Norah don't really get on. But when Rose, who needs money to send her son to private school, comes across an opening in what it turns out is a growth industry, she persuades her sister top go into business with her. That industry, cleaning up the blood, guts and other mess after crime scenes - murder, suicide and other "specialised situations" - is what provides the unusual setting against which the sisters work out their differences.
The result is a gently comic study of character about three engaging and interestingly eccentric losers in a hostile world. Adams is a very engaging and versatile young actress who captures our sympathy, while Blunt shows another side of her skills as Norah, who grudgingly agrees to help out and who we later realise is still suffering from her unresolved grief over the suicide of their mother, which happened when she was a small girl. She forms an interestingly ambiguous relationship with the daughter of one of their late "clients", in which one is never quite sure whether this is to do with Norah's feelings about her own mother or whether she is actually gay. Arkin is as usual superb, though it would have been good if he had had a bit more opportunity to develop his character. There are also some satisfyingly original supporting characters - Zahn as Rose's love rat boyfriend and particularly Clifton Collins Jr. as Winston, who runs the store where Rose gets supplies for her dirty jobs and who takes a shine to her and her small son Oscar (Jason Spevack). Like Oscar we are all dying to find out why Winston only has one arm. We never do!
While often very funny, the comedy is melded skilfully with touches of genuine tragedy, not only in the sisters' situation but in moments such as when Rose silently comforts the bewildered elderly widow of a recent suicide. The pace slackens a bit in places and the ending of the story is a little unsatisfactorily abrupt but overall it's charming, entertaining and above all that little bit different.
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