A Price Above Rubies

Released 1998
Stars Renee Zellweger, Christopher Eccleston, Glenn Fitzgerald, Allen Payne, Julianna Margulies, Kathleen Chalfant, Shelton Dane
Directed by Boaz Yakin

A Price Above Rubies is writer/director Boaz Yakin's follow-up to his highly-regarded, tautly-paced 1994 picture, Fresh. Sadly, little of the energy and intelligence of the earlier film is evident in this, an overwrought melodrama populated by stereotypes and featuring an improbable storyline that relies upon a string of coincidences. Ostensibly, A Price Above Rubies details the struggle of one woman to throw off the shackles of a conservative society, but the manner in which Yakin approaches this theme is preachy, pedantic, and predictable.

The woman is Sonia and the society is New York City's Hasidic Jewish community. She is a good woman married to Mendel, a highly-respected scholar. From the beginning, Sonia is aware that there is something missing from her matrimonial union. Everything that she finds erotic, he finds indecent. To him, sex is exclusively for procreation, not for quenching "the fire" that burns inside of his wife. Any observer can see than Sonia is profoundly unhappy, but only her brother-in-law, Sender, offers a solution.

In addition to giving Sonia work procuring jewelry for his underground business, Sender enters into a sexual relationship with her (that, apparently, is the price she pays for getting the job). As unwanted as she finds his rough advances, Sonia is liberated through this act of unfaithfulness. As a result of the new facets of life shown to her by Sender, Sonia begins to yearn for the kind of freedom that she cannot find within the Hasidic community. Yet she realizes that if she attempts to leave Mendel, she will lose everything. Meanwhile, she finds herself battling an attraction to a promising young jewelry maker, which further complicates her situation. To help her with her difficult decisions, Sonia receives advice from two unusual agents: a prophetic bag lady and the ghost of her brother, who died as a child.

Summary by James Berardinelli