Their poverty is 'sanitized'???

"Tree" is playing at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC as part of a Joan Blondell retrospective. The VILLAGE VOICE had an encapsulated review saying that the movie was good but that the poverty portrayed on-screen is 'sanitized', making it seem as though its a very 'Hollywood' version of what poverty is like. I don't feel that way at all and I was wondering if that ever occured to anyone else who knows and loves this movie as much as I do. You see the fact that they are poor all the time..Katie having to work, the kids having to buy old bread and trade rags for pennies, the insurance guy noticing the rug is tattered, and Johnny bringing home leftovers from the wedding he sang at. There are many other examples of this and I just that the movie is very realistic in that sense. Its not as though they just 'say' how poor they are and there is no evidence of that..