Oh so Sundance-y but likeably so, this indie dotes on another scrappy working-class single mom getting herself together. As in 2003’s “Sylvia,” New Zealand director Christine Jeffs uses suicide as a lodestar. Rose (Amy Adams from “Doubt”) is no poet here, but this former high school cheerleader feels deeply for the departed. A part-time maid, she finds a new calling in cleaning up the mortal remains and removing the stains after suicides, homicides and more peaceful passings in the greater and lesser Albuquerque area. Apartment-building managers and loved ones pay well for this service, Rose learns. She recruits her screwed-up sister Norah (Emily Blunt from “The Devil Wears Prada”) to help. Utility oddball Alan Arkin plays their dad, who raised them on his own after their mom checked herself out of their lives. Rose is sleeping with a married detective (Steve Zahn) and Norah is cruising a blood bank employee (Mary Lynn Rajskub from “24”). Rose’s eight-year-old boy (Jason Spevack) starts bonding with the one-armed owner of the local cleaning-supplies store (Clifton Collins). Megan Holley’s script goes sappy, though, whenever a character misses someone real bad. Ersatz contact occurs thanks to a pair of heirloom binoculars, a citizens-band radio on a wishful wavelength or reruns of a movie-of-the-week starring a loved one in a bit part. Family-owned businesses take heart, with or without a blood-borne pathogens certification. With Judith Jones, Eric Christian Olsen, Paul Dooley and Kevin Chapman. 102m. (Bill Stamets)
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Oh so Sundance-y but likeably so, this indie dotes on another scrappy working-class single mom getting herself together. As in 2003’s “Sylvia,” New Zealand director Christine Jeffs uses suicide as a lodestar. Rose (Amy Adams from “Doubt”) is no poet here, but this former high school cheerleader feels deeply for the departed. A part-time maid, she finds a new calling in cleaning up the mortal remains and removing the stains after suicides, homicides and more peaceful passings in the greater and lesser Albuquerque area. Apartment-building managers and loved ones pay well for this service, Rose learns. She recruits her screwed-up sister Norah (Emily Blunt from “The Devil Wears Prada”) to help. Utility oddball Alan Arkin plays their dad, who raised them on his own after their mom checked herself out of their lives. Rose is sleeping with a married detective (Steve Zahn) and Norah is cruising a blood bank employee (Mary Lynn Rajskub from “24”). Rose’s eight-year-old boy (Jason Spevack) starts bonding with the one-armed owner of the local cleaning-supplies store (Clifton Collins). Megan Holley’s script goes sappy, though, whenever a character misses someone real bad. Ersatz contact occurs thanks to a pair of heirloom binoculars, a citizens-band radio on a wishful wavelength or reruns of a movie-of-the-week starring a loved one in a bit part. Family-owned businesses take heart, with or without a blood-borne pathogens certification. With Judith Jones, Eric Christian Olsen, Paul Dooley and Kevin Chapman. 102m. (Bill Stamets)
