During the screening I attended of The Bread, My Sweet, the sound was off slightly. Speakers out of phase or at least not well dusted, was one opinion, although someone else laid it on the print or the e-mailed instructions to put volume at 8.5 instead of 7. One or two said mainly the bass was askew, and all felt it improved with the second reel. Except me. For whatever reason, my aging ears had trouble throughout, so that a fair bit of realistically low-voiced dialogue seemed mere intriguing mumble. Life's really like that, unobtrusive and half-lost, and it is a measure of this awfully titled film that it rises above cutesiness and is worth a look-see.

A large step above other recent smug, ethnic family comedies both domestic and from abroad, The Bread, My Sweet is obvious and absurd in some ways, but, more, it's also unpretentious, non-exploitative and enjoyable. Partly a poem to Pittsburgh -- where Romero's living dead had scoured suburban fields and Marine Jahan once flashdanced uncredited -- the film has been a success there for nearly two years now and gathered awards at numerous smaller festivals. Despite an opening tribute to the Smoky Steel City's Strip, open-air market and diversity of nationalities and races -- and an annoying tambourine-wielding street gypsy who shows up now and again and bodes absolutely nothing -- the story immediately zeroes in on "a world that once existed in [writer/producer/first-time director Melissa Martin's] life but had . . . disappeared."

Set in the place where she was born, schooled and currently teaches, Martin's script is derived from personal experience, what she calls a "love letter . . . to a place, to a time" and to an elderly Old Worldly couple living upstairs from her own husband's biscotti bakery. First outlined in the now deceased couple's kitchen, and gathering know-how detail from big-business-world dropout Larry Lagattuta's successful Enrico Biscotti Company, the story dovetails these two seeds.

High-salaried corporate raider/axe man, second generation Italian-American Dominic "Dom" Pyzola (Scott Baio) dresses and lives well, drives a Porsche Boxster and would be a fine catch. But his love is reserved for elder brothers Pino (Shuler Hensley), who is retarded and lives with him, and carefree womanizer Eddie (Billy Mott), the three of them running the old-fashioned bakery that Dom can only attend to early mornings before his suit-and-tie job. The brothers have a personal touch with their humorous, often picky customers and are particularly close to elderly Bella (Rosemary Prinz) and Massimo (John Seitz), who live upstairs and are surrogate parents to them.

Lingering on frequent close-ups of baking and other food preparation, like culinary pornography, the camera captures the feel of ethnic life. Hobbled with a walker, Massimo is too heavy on Anthony Quinn tics and Kemosabe English, and chipper Bella can get cloying, as well, but the cast is generally good, with Hensley outstanding. Aside from a couple of overdone satirical board meetings, where plastic business food replaces the Italian real stuff, scenes are underplayed, if anything, perhaps as an antidote to the actors' largely TV and stage backgrounds.

Their mother killed in a car wreck, responsible brother Dom regrets never having reassured her about Pino. Learning that Bella is terminally ill, he determines to make up for that earlier lapse by finding and bring home the couple's long-gone bohemian daughter. Unconventional beauty Lucca (Kristin Minter) returns from Mexico, amidst rumors about her sexuality and adventures. The mother's condition brings life into sharper definition, and Dom quits his corporate existence for the bakery and brothers and, with a grandmother's ring, proposes to Lucca, for the dying woman's sake (he thinks) and only temporarily: "Six months and you're out."

Surprisingly, she agrees but -- a self-admitted quitter of everything, who has lived by selling fake tourist relics -- has reservations about staying the course. Will she or won't she, however, is hardly in doubt, a matter of how and when, not if. This is comedy, and even in the bitter face of death, it affirms life and love and, in the promise of children and grandchildren, continuity for the future. Lucca voices her hesitation, her parents never, although their faces reveal that they suspect but are happy to pretend for a moment or two.

What starts as at least partly an urban and business film becomes finally a small tale of sacrifice, loss, and love. Retreating into an ever more reduced realm, with very few actors, it is restricted to family business and family, and finally to a single couple. By no means earthshaking, but satisfying like a good family meal, The Bread, My Sweet is a comic, tad teary, good-natured movie that rewards without being embarrassing. The reduced scope (and budget) results in a quietly pleasant film. Can Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners be far around the corner? 

(Released by Panorama Entertainment; not rated by MPAA.)