If one were to insist that “Keep the Change” is a romantic comedy, that description — sorry, young lovers — might make a lot of us think that it would be insipid, shallow, predictable. You might be expecting that it would begin with a couple meeting cute, over spilled groceries perhaps, then exchanging heartfelt glances while reaching for the rolling oranges, and finally, a week later, holding hands as preconceptions have melted away and they’re both leaning into the job of pushing one cart down the supermarket aisle.

But “Keep the Change,” the story of two young people who, despite the quotidian challenges of living with autism, have pushed through their lives and are hungry for relationships, is free of such cliches. David (Brandon Polansky), a lonely young man desperate to be cool, meets Sarah (Samantha Elisofon), a lonely young woman who seems oblivious to how cool she isn’t.

Each is competent enough to follow patterns and get through the rote parts of everyday life, but unable to deal with challenges of the unexpected or the setting of longer-range goals. They have few prospects.

David, a compulsive joke-teller, is from a well-off family. His parents take him as they travel between homes in Florida and New York. After he insults a police officer by telling him a “pig” joke, a court orders him to attend an arts workshop for kids with developmental problems. The family chauffeur drives him back and forth from home to the sessions.

Sarah lives with her drunken grandmother. She travels to the workshop by bus, knowing where to get off only by counting the stops. She is an extrovert, a singer and performer who “dates” lots of guys, and is known in the workshop for being sexually active.

As the story unfolds, in the manner of more prosaic romantic comedies, David and Sarah come to know each other, understand each other, misunderstand each other, face strife and pain ... and here I’m not going to provide a spoiler. At this point, I can see the faces of fellow skeptics turned off by what sounds like a story crafted to play on the heartstrings.

It’s not. Director-writer Rachel Israel met the real-life “David” in an art class, befriended him and eventually decided to make a short film about him. She met the real-life “Sarah” after seeing her at a community for people with autism, when Israel was looking to cast someone for the female role in the feature-length version. They are acting, and they are not: It’s clear, from David’s moody stare and Sarah’s loony laugh that the actors share a deep understanding of their roles.

They were hired — as was the rest of the cast — to play versions of themselves. That’s reality. Israel didn’t come to the project imagining Tom Hanks sending cute emails to Meg Ryan. And she didn’t come to it singing a sad-lady ballad meant to elicit sympathetic sighs.

Instead, “Keep the Change,” which was the opening night film of of last summer’s San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, accomplishes a much more difficult task: When the movie starts, its main characters seem outside the norm, unusual, “wierdos,” in the description of David himself.

By its end, you see nothing at all of that; they’re just people.

Leah Garchik is a Chronicle columnist. Email: lgarchik@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @leahgarchik

Keep the Change

POLITE APPLAUSEStarring Brandon Polansky and Samantha Elisofon. Directed by Rachel Israel. (Unrated. 93 minutes.)

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