`ULEE'S' TRUTH, FONDA'S PERFORMANCE SOLID GOLD.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Critic

Peter Fonda finally gets the chance to prove himself a fine actor in ``Ulee's Gold.'' In this quiet, observant film - such a tonic to the summer's overabundance of noisy effects behemoths - Fonda masterfully pinches emotions while allowing the smallest increments of humanity to inch, step by tentative step, to the surface.

Fonda's performance is being compared to the work of his famous father, Henry. But that's unfair to the son. While he's inevitably aged into a similar mannerism or two, the taciturn poignancy he brings to the angry, self-isolating beekeeper Ulysses Jackson is a wholly distinctive and original triumph. It's hard to think of a movie that's featured a man as simultaneously limited and admirable as Fonda's creation, portrayed with such unfussy simplicity.

``Ulee's Gold'' was written and directed by Victor Nunez, the genuinely independent Florida filmmaker who, last time out, gave Ashley Judd her (still unsurpassed) starring debut in ``Ruby in Paradise.'' He kind of does a similar favor, at the other end of the career span, for Fonda here. However, whatever weaknesses there are in the movie come from a handful of false moves made by Nunez; they're small lapses in tone and presentation, but in a film as delicately natural as this one, they cause noticeable imbalance.

When he's not moving his bee colonies around the Florida Panhandle backwoods, recent widower Ulee is trying to raise his preadolescent and rebellious teen-age granddaughters (Vanessa Zima and Jessica Biel) - and failing miserably. But what can he do? Harvest time for the rare tupelo honey is nigh, and just when he needs it, his jailbird son, Jimmy (Tom Wood), calls to say that two old cronies have found Ulee's long-missing daughter-in-law, Helen (Christine Dunford).

She's all drugged out in Orlando, and Ulee crankily goes to retrieve her. But he only brings her home after the two creeps (Steven Flynn and Dewey Weber) make him agree to a dangerous deal. Helen fights Ulee's efforts to dry her out; Connie Hope, a nice new neighbor who also happens to be a nurse (``Home Improvement's'' Patricia Richardson) helps out - and also manages to draw Ulee out of his righteously fed-up shell. Meanwhile, the honey harvest gives the dysfunctional family members something to bond over, and all is going too deceptively well.

If you've noticed a thread of Homer running through this, you're not seeing things (Ulee is even a Vietnam vet who's still guilty about being his unit's only survivor). The journey home this modern Ulysses must travel, of course, is back to his own capacity for loving, rather than resenting the people he cares for.

Ulee's other odyssey is through a rural, contemporary South that Nunez captures with the same kind of matter-of-fact perfection that Fonda gives to his performance. You can almost feel the level of humidity in the mossy woods and can certainly appreciate the peaceful solitude that only a certain kind of man can find amid a swarm of industrious bees.

But then Helen comes around a little too gratefully. The Orlando boys drop by with a cooler full of melodrama. Everyone goes through a crisis and comes out a better person for it. These small, easy plot points belong in another movie, one that hasn't established so much hard truth.

That, and Fonda's work, is the movie's solid gold.

The facts

The film: ``Ulee's Gold'' (R; drug use, violence, language, children in jeopardy).

The stars: Peter Fonda, Patricia Richardson, Christine Dunford, Tom Wood, Vanessa Zima.

Behind the scenes: Written and directed by Victor Nunez. Produced by Stewart Lippe. Released by Orion Pictures.

Running time: One hour, 53 minutes.

Playing: Sunset 5, West Hollywood; Goldwyn Pavilion, West Los Angeles.

Our rating: Three stars

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Photo

Photo: Trying to raise Penny (Vanessa Zima), his teen-age granddaughter, recent widower Ulee Jackson (Peter Fonda) moves his bee colonies in preparation for honey harvest time in ``Ulee's Gold.''