SOCCER

“Soft Fruit” asks us to spend 101 minutes with people most of us wouldtake pains to avoid in real life.

The difference between this film, a first feature for writer-director Christina Andreef, and works by her executive producer, Jane Campion, is that Campion can take blue-collar Australians and New Zealanders at their crassest levels and involve us in their fates. Andreef’s people are, by and large, as off-putting at the end as they are at the beginning, and they stubbornly remain types rather than emerging as individuals.

Andreef tries for laughter amid tears as a rowdy clan in a small town gathers to be with hearty matriarch Patsy (Jeanie Dryden). At the outset Patsy seems perfectly fine, but she is facing a swift decline and death from some unspecified form of abdominal cancer.

Patsy has been married a long time to Vic (Linal Haft), an irascible and violent Russian immigrant. Her eldest daughter, Josie (Genevieve Lemon), arrives from the United States with her small children, promising herself she won’t squabble with her sisters, Nadia (Sacha Horler) and Vera (Alice Talbot). Patsy’s son Bo (Russell Dykstra), a drug-abusing biker, has won early parole from prison--we don’t know precisely what put him there, but he’s clearly the reckless type--but his father has sworn not to let him in the house.

Patsy seems a pleasant-enough woman with a passion for Jacqueline Kennedy that she defends as a harmless flight of fancy, and who would argue with that? Her daughters are all pretty women who are also overweight, so there’s much concern among them about what the bathroom scales will reveal. They spar a bit, carry on a lot, but it’s crystal-clear they’re basically nice women who will pull together to care tenderly for their mother. The clash between Vic (who’s not above giving a grown daughter a hard smack if she says something that displeases him) and Bo is predictably violent, but we never do get a clue as to why Vic is such a relentless, thick-headed brute.

The ability to play boisterous comedy against impending tragedy effectively is beyond Andreef’s reach, and the entire family comes across as loud and tiresome. None of its behavior is convincing because none of these people seems completely real in the first place. A poor man’s “Sweetie”--alas, Andreef was that film’s assistant director--”Soft Fruit” is soft-headed.

* MPAA rating: R, for sexuality and nudity, language and drug content. Times guidelines: language, sex, nudity, adult themes.

‘Soft Fruit’

Jeanie Dryden: Patsy

Linal Haft: Vic

Russell Dykstra: Bo

Genevieve Lemon: Josie

Sacha Horler: Nadia

Alicia Talbot: Vera

A Fox Searchlight Pictures and Australian Film Finance Corp. presentation in association with the New South Wales Film Board and Television Office. Writer-director Christina Andreef. Executive producer Jane Campion. Cinematographer Laszlo Baranyi. Editor Jane Moran. Music Antony Partos. Costumes Jane Holland. Production designer Sarah Stollman. Running time: 1 hour, 41 minutes.

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