A PRICE ABOVE RUBIES (Miramax) Starring: Renee Zellweger, Christopher Eccleston, Glen Fitzgerald, Allen Payne, Julianna Margulies. Screenplay: Boaz Yakin. Producer: Lawrence Bender. Director: Boaz Yakin. MPAA Rating: R (adult themes, sexual situations) Running Time: 120 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
At the 1998 Sundance Film Festival, writer/director Boaz Yakin commented that A PRICE ABOVE RUBIES isn't so much specifically about life in the Hasidic Jewish community as it is about "being an individual in any society where conformity and tradition dominate." The story could just as easily have taken place in the Amish country, apparently, or in any other highly conservative culture. Why, our ambitious, determined heroine Sonia Horowitz (Renee Zellweger) might have been Sonia Smith if the mood had struck him, or Sonia Gomez.
In a cinematic era of hot air and gimmickry, it's hard to fault a film-maker when he's trying to tell a story _about_ something. Unfortunately for Yakin, beginning with a theme doesn't work when the cultural atmosphere is as crucial to a story as Hasidic Judaism is to A PRICE ABOVE RUBIES. The narrative follows wife and mother Sonia as she struggles to express her passions -- for sexuality, for a career in the jewelry business -- in a world where the highest passion is expected to be reserved for God. Though her husband Mendel (Glen Fitzgerald) is a decent and holy man, she finds herself caught up in affairs with her brother-in-law Sender (Christopher Eccleston) and a Puerto Rican artist (Allen Payne), facing the unimaginable fate of complete exclusion from her community.
It's an intriguing story, told by Yakin with an aura of mysticism as Sonia frequently converses with a mysterious homeless woman (Kathleen Chalfant) and the spirit of her dead brother Yossi (Shelton Dane). You can feel the world shifting constantly within her, conveyed through the naked emotionalism of Zellweger's performance. The world around her, however, never seems to be a real place of strictures and conventions. It's a movie set with costumes and props, into which Sonia might just as well have been dropped like an alien into a Spielbergian American suburb. Yakin commits himself so thoroughly to making Sonia a genuinely complex character that he doesn't take the time to fill in the background.
It certainly doesn't help that some of the blind-to-a-fault casting stretches credulity to the breaking point. British actor Christopher Eccleston chews on his New Yawk accent as though he were about to blow a bubble with it, while creating a borderline melodramatic rendition of manipulative villainy. Zellweger, meanwhile, throws her heart and soul into Sonia but can't quite turn rural Texan into New York Jew. If you want to distill what doesn't work in A PRICE ABOVE RUBIES into two words, try to imagine Renee Zellweger convincingly uttering the magic words, "Oy gevalt."
A PRICE ABOVE RUBIES is the sort of sincere, well-meaning movie which makes you feel vaguely guilty for not liking it more, since it is never sincere and well-meaning in that ponderous, self-righteous way which characterizes so many Hollywood "issue" dramas. There are some wonderful touches to enjoy, notably an insinuating score by Lesley Barber, which complement Yakin's patient narrative development. Sonia's story of self-actualization is bound to resonate with some viewers, because it is both heartfelt and honest. But while Yakin manages to make the film feel honest, he doesn't make it feel _true_. Without the richness of a fully-realized society as a foundation for character study, A PRICE ABOVE RUBIES essentially offers solid actors in an under-stated tolerance lecture.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 costume Jewries: 5.
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