A PRICE ABOVE RUBIES A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 1998 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): **
A PRICE ABOVE RUBIES, a languid look at a woman's liberation from the religious ties that bind her, features a nice performance by Renee Zellweger from JERRY MAGUIRE in the underwritten role of Sonia. Writer and director Boaz Yakin takes us deep into a Hasidic Jewish community in New York City, where he manages to disparage their faith without finding any redeeming values.
Religious ridicule is guaranteed to stir up people, and it did during the movie's filming. But if the protestors had seen the finished product, perhaps they would have not been so upset. Although Yakin shows nothing beneficial in Hasidic doctrine, his movie drifts along so slowly and predictably that few will be moved enough to care.
There are, however, some interesting portions and the previously mentioned nice performance, but only the one. The excellent Christopher Eccleston, who was so incredible as the star of JUDE, plays Sender, Sonia's brother-in-law, who floats in and out of the story. When there, he gets to say some outrageous lines ("Piety is the standard by which we are judged, but it is the quality of our sins that set us apart"), have a fast bit of illicit sex with Sonia up against the nearest wall, and then disappear again.
Sonia is married to the ultra pious Mendel (Glenn Fitzgerald), whose biggest fear appears to be that Sonia might enjoy marital sex. He interrupts his own foreplay with her to start praying.
Sonia, it turns out is the daughter of one of the best gemologist in the state. Sender makes her the operator of his illegal "cash business", in which he sells jewelry to the local Jewish community out of a basement guarded by a fake wino. This whole arrangement angers Mendel, but being a classic wimp, he mainly complains and whines about it.
One of the story's better scenes has the men and boys arguing the fine points of the Torah around the dinner table. Fast paced and smartly written it has the energy that the other parts of the film badly lack. It also shows clearly how the men and the women exist in parallel communities much as the men and women do in GOODFELLAS.
A major problem with the script is the abrupt change in Sonia's character after she gets a job. One minute the severely repressed woman is having anxiety attacks so terrible that she appears in danger of catching fire. And the next she is a strong woman, being a super-tough negotiator with the jewelry suppliers and having sex with her employer on whatever table is convenient.
The picture takes great pains to look authentic and to set a serious tone, which makes the story's two apparitions - Sonia's dead brother Yossi (Shelton Dane) and a mysterious beggar (Kathleen Chalfant) - seem so out of place. Yossi appears, for example, to remind Sonia when she eats an egg roll with "pig" in it that she is going to hell. The beggar, who may or may not be real, makes even less sense.
The ending appears designed almost as an after thought, and it fails to work on several levels. With its coldly antiseptic tone, the movie seems more interested in preaching awkwardly to the audience that inviting it in. Typical is Sonia's little homily in which she tells us, "Sometimes I look at men and wonder how God could have created so ugly a creature for women to cling to?"
A PRICE ABOVE RUBIES runs 1:57. It is rated R for sex, profanity, and nudity and would be acceptable for older teenagers.
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