‘Clean’ Review: An Inspirational Doc About Tidying Up Life’s Biggest Messes Using Chemicals and Kindness

variety.com:

Jessica Kiang There is a certain satisfaction in learning the stories of people who, through luck, circumstance or sheer grit, have ended up in precisely the right job.

Australian director Lachlan McLeod’s “Clean” turns out to be just such a story, but here the job is trauma cleaning — that is, swabbing down crime scenes and suicide sites, clearing out inherited or repossessed houses, assisting the mentally and physically disabled with home maintenance and tackling the grimly fascinating phenomenon that is hoarding.

Initially it’s unfathomable that anyone’s life experience could make them ideally suited to this extraordinary, specialist profession — much less to develop an entire philosophy around it.

But that’s before we get to know Sandra Pankhurst, the founder of Melbourne-based trauma cleaning company STC. McLeod’s approach is at first a little coy, implying the film will be less about any one person than about the necessary but often harrowing services STC provides.