Amazon.com video review:
The title Soft Fruit could be construed as writer-director
Christina Andreef's blunt assessment of the four flailing progeny of a
Jackie O-obsessed mother, Patsy (Jeanie Drynan), and a hot-tempered Slavic
dad (Linal Haft) in this bittersweet comic drama of familial dysfunction.
But Andreef's loving, accepting debut feature celebrates both the beauty of
bantering siblings and the brutish realities they ignore with a kind of
willing amnesia. Patsy, who is dying of cancer, decides to take control of
her life for the first time by taking control of her death. That means
bringing her four kids back together (including a parolee son that Dad has
banished from the house) and satisfying her fanciful final wishes against
doctor's orders. Drynan, who was so sweetly oblivious in Muriel's
Wedding, faces her fears and pain with a giddy sense of play, but it's
also obvious that she has spent her life avoiding confrontation that could
have saved her children from the pain they faced from a punishing father.
Andreef's at times chaotic, rambling portrait doesn't hide the jealousies
and rivalries and is generously understanding of human weakness in her edgy
love-hate conflicts between bickering sisters and a disconnected father and
son. Full of inventive imagery, it makes for an edgy black comedy that is
often hilarious, at times painful, and periodically awkward and messy. It always
rings true. --Sean Axmaker
