The 2009 film Sunshine Cleaning received lukewarm reviews from the New York Times and Rolling Stone. Critics halfheartedly admitted that a film whose plot involved smelly body fluids could function as a heartwarming slice-of-life picture. While the film, which premiered in the 2008 Sundance festival, does induce its share of squeamishness, the discomfort you’ll feel while watching it doesn’t just result from icky imagery. Sunshine Cleaning goes where only an independent film can go to address several topics far more disturbing than brain-spattered mattresses, and provides a worthwhile nugget of truth … for those who can stomach it. 

Uncomfortable truth #1: Good people do bad things.
Rose Lorkowski, Sunshine Cleaning’s tragicomic heroine, is an incredibly sympathetic character. A working-class single mother who has fallen short of her own ambitions, Rose dives into her crime scene cleanup gig with dignity and optimism. She’s also sleeping with a married man. 

Rose beats herself up about this fact. The audience, on the other hand, is left unsure of how to judge her. Rose is a woman of sound morals who is trying her best to do what it right for her son, Oscar, her family, and her career. Her affair—a smelly stain on her otherwise squeaky-clean ethic résumé—is disappointing to audience members hoping to support the film’s protagonist in all her trials. The fact is that Rose is fallible, and it is impossible to enjoy Sunshine Cleaning without accepting and getting over that. 

Uncomfortable truth #2: Daddy doesn’t always know best.
It would be wonderful if financially and emotionally burdened sisters Rose and Norah had a wise, solid character on whom to rely. Ideally, this character would be their father, Joe. 

In reality, Joe fumbles to make a living via get-rich-quick schemes just like his daughters. While Joe Lorkowski comes through for his daughters however he can—by watching Oscar, mediating the sisters’ conflicts, and ultimately helping Rose revive her business—he cannot provide them with easier lives or a flawless role model. There is something embarrassing and emasculating about a father’s inability to alleviate his children’s hardship, which draws a grimace from audience members who recognize the sensation. 

Uncomfortable truth #3: Failure happens.
Does Rose succeed in her goal to earn enough money to afford private school for Oscar? The film hints that she has a chance, though we don’t get the satisfaction of finding out for sure. 

Several endeavors within the film simply flop: Norah makes a mistake that destroys the sisters’ business, and also fails to uplift a sad woman by befriending her; Rose fails to rekindle relationships with her high school buddies and makes a decision to leave her married lover that, while brave, leaves her lonelier than ever. The sisters remain optimistic throughout the movie, as do angelic Oscar and bumbling Joe. They do not, however, really succeed. Sunshine Cleaning offers no resolution, but paints an accurate (if dismaying) portrait of a middle-class American dream gone stale and expired. 

Uncomfortable truth #4: You’re gonna die and it might not be pretty.
No one wants to die alone, unloved, and sticky, but some people do. Those are the people whose houses Rose and Norah have to clean, and each house serves as a reminder—to the sisters as well as the audience—that what happens to our bodies after death is dank and undignified. 

This truth is not, in my opinion, as uncomfortable as the others in the movie, because there is a foreseeable alternative to the icky exit that the film’s victims make. True, good people make mistakes. True, sometimes the best we can do is not good enough. True, our childhood heroes may abandon and disappoint us. But people like Rose, Norah, and Joe don’t end up like the bodies of which they dispose. This is because they watch out for each other, despite their other failures, and won’t die alone. This element gives a Sundance film a Hollywood ending, and offers its audience a tiny ray of sunshine on its way out of the theater.