Two sisters start a biohazard-removal service. With Amy Adams, Emily Blunt, Alan Arkin. Director: Christine Jeffs. (1:42) R: Sexuality, language, adult situations. At the Landmark Sunshine and Lincoln Square.

There’s an air of death and exhaustion around the characters in “Sunshine Cleaning,” but hang on — it’s not at all off-putting.

Though this well-observed, wry drama is determined to be quirky, its most endearing quality, like that of its heroines, is a willingness to wallow in foul moods and come out the other side.

Rose Lorkowski (Amy Adams) is a thirtyish former cheerleader shambling through life in Albuquerque as a cleaning woman.She has an eight-year-old son (Jason Spevack), an aging, distracted father (Alan Arkin) and money trouble; she knows she’s trapped in her life.

Her younger sister Norah (Emily Blunt), a waitress, is also stuck but deals with it by rebelling.

Though in Albuquerque’s lower-middle-class environs, there’s little to rebel against, so Norah turns her fight inward, going for the apathetic Goth look complete with forearm tattoos.

The siblings are haunted in different ways by their mother’s suicide when they were kids, but share one trait: denial.

That actually helps them adjust when, to get cash for troubled Oscar’s new private school, they take a tip from Rose’s married cop boyfriend (Steve Zahn) and start Sunshine Cleaning, a service to clear the blood and gunk away from local crime scenes.

The stench of death initially makes them recoil but they trudge on, resilience as much second nature to them as repression.

“Sunshine Cleaning” goes to all the expected indie places — the grandpa-and-kid subplot, business stumblings, Rose’s flirtation with an unexpected new man (Clifton Collins Jr., in an understated turn as a one-armed store clerk) – but director Christine Jeffs and screenwriter Megan Holley let it ramble, too.

That approach sometimes gives it too much leeway, letting what seems to be a burgeoning romantic relationship between Norah and a new friend (Mary Lynn Rajskub) just drift away unaddressed.

But mostly it keeps the movie squarely in left field. Arkin and Zahn keep it toned down, but it’s Adams and Blunt who benefit most from Jeffs’ gentle approach.

Blunt (“The Devil Wears Prada”), with her twitchy expressions and stiff-limbed walk, is like a less crazy-eyed Zooey Deschanel (which makes her more real), and Adams (“Enchanted,” “Doubt”) with her big, sad eyes and un-Hollywood beauty, comes off like a dampened firecracker you’re eager to see light up.

They make these quietly striving women compelling and real.

Source: NY Daily News

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