Soft Fruit (or, Lest We Forget)

Some of my favourite Australian films are the ones that slip into obscurity as soon as they finish their theatrical run. Soft Fruit is one of those films, in fact, even though it was selected for Sundance, Cannes and San Sebastian, Christina Andreef's feature only received a dvd release last year. It only took seven years. I have been wanting to see it again all that time.

To be honest, there is not all that much to the film. It is a simple tale of a mother who draws her family back home so she can spend her final days with them. It would be nothing without Jeanie Drynan (who you'll remember as the mother from Murial's Wedding). She is sublime. She brings such joy to her tragic trajectory into the next world. She defiantly thrusts her happiness on her children and forces them to live out her final fantasies. It is such an endearing portrayal and it worthwhile tracking down the film just for her performance.

The family dynamics, especially the duelling father and son, are both funny and deeply moving. Sacha Horler's rendition of Wuthering Heights is hilARious so make sure you catch up on the original before you stuff this film into your dvd player.

The comedy in the film is quite black owing to its realism and I think it touched home with my mother, who not so long ago went through a similar process with her father. One scene, where the mother and her son pop in to buy her burial casket prompted my mother to share a story about when she went with my uncle to pick out a coffin for Papa.

They pretty much both picked out the same coffin independently, an unadorned pine box. It was the second cheapest in the display room. When they asked each other why they'd chosen that particular casket they both answered simultaneously that Papa would have looked at it and said, "I can make something from that!"

Yeah, he was a bit of a character. If he ever saw someone reading the obituaries in the paper, he'd always ask, "Am I there yet?" He even asked it on his death bed.

It is nice to know his sense of humour lives on.

Tags: film, Australian cinema