Soft Fruit

In this refreshingly earthy Australian film, exec-produced by Jane Campion (Sweetie, The Piano), four grown siblings return home, putting aside their petty squabbling long enough to assist their terminally ailing mom (incandescently played by Jeanie Drynan, the glum mother in Muriel's Wedding) in her final months. The family circle includes three plump sisters--shy and unhappily childless Vera, wildly impetuous Nadia, and pushy but repressed Josie--along with their ex-con brother Bo, whose father, the always angry Vic, refuses to let his son stay in his house. The forced family reunion of this eccentric and often off-putting bunch provides an obvious chance for some belated bonding, yet the family ties are not rejoined in typically cloying Hollywood fashion. With its unforced black humor--shopping for a casket, for instance--and mostly unsentimental attitude towards sex, death, etc., Fruit isn't soft but rather quite firm and naturally tart. Recommended. (T. Rich)