A Price above Rubies
USA/France/UK 1997
Reviewed by Nina Caplan
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
New York City, the present. Orthodox-Jewish Sonia is married to Mendel, a religious scholar. They have a son but she feels alienated from him and their community. Mendel's brother Sender, knowing that her father was a jeweller, offers Sonia the job of buyer for his covert jewellery business. She jumps at the freedom, displeasing Mendel. Sonia and Sender begin a passionless affair, but she thrives in the job. She discovers an exquisite ring with an open setting and sets out to discover its maker. Helped by the apparition of her dead brother Yossi and a homeless woman who may also be imaginary, she tracks down jewellery-maker and sculptor Ramon.
Sonia's late return from Ramon's prompts Mendel to insist she leave her job. He suggests marriage counselling but the counsellor is a rabbi and Sonia leaves, furious. She pushes a resentful Ramon to make more jewellery. Sender informs the family Sonia is having an affair with a Puerto Rican. Mendel refuses to see her and her sister-in-law Rachel denies her access to her son. Sender offers her a room, which she rejects. Eventually she goes to Ramon's place and after a heartfelt talk, they make love. Sonia retrieves the ring from Sender's workplace and asks Ramon to look after it. She meets Mendel and they agree they're happier apart. He apologises for having forgotten her birthday, and tells her to visit their son regardless of their community's hostility. He leaves her with a birthday present: a ruby.
Review
According to the Bible, "A woman of fortitude, who can find? For her price is far above rubies." She'll need her fortitude, since however high the price, women are still 'for sale' in some cultures. A Price above Rubies' heroine Sonia Horowitz simply cannot place her emotions at the service of her intellect as Orthodox Judaism requires. Renee Zellweger's beautiful performance makes clear that it's not a lack of intelligence but excessive passion that makes her such a bad bargain: like Eve, she craves knowledge - of her worth as opposed to her price.
Tradition is the oxygen of the Jewish religion, which may be why films with Jewish subjects tend to focus on the past, mythical-biblical (The Ten Commandments) or recent (Schindler's List, Solomon and Gaenor). Like the much-mocked A Stranger among Us, in which Melanie Griffith finds happiness among the same New York Orthodox community, Rubies is contemporary: Sonia's problems are those of self-definition any modern woman encounters, but with better-labelled obstacles. When, absorbed by work, she offers her husband Mendel microwave dinners, he voices the resentment of an old-fashioned husband, a role no longer available to his secular or gentile counterparts. Her anguished question, whether he loves her more than God (as her dead brother Yossi did), is actually asking whether he loves her at all, phrased in a language he understands, a curiously childlike language from a woman trying to grow up to a man determined to remain a child of God.
This is partisan stuff. Writer/director Boaz Yakin's determination that we take Sonia's side makes his Jewish community rather one-dimensional (there were angry protests made during the filming). Mendel's religion is a shield, his sister Rachel's a weapon and at no point are the virtues of a close-knit community pointed out. Sonia's displacement is drummed in with metaphor: she is a jewel seeking a setting, a woman in a man's world both at work and home, an intelligent adult whose closest companions are phantoms - Yossi and an old woman from a fairy tale. Sonia's past is as alive to her as the collective past is to her husband, but he wishes to stand still while she burns to advance.
If Sonia is Eve, her brother-in-law Sender is undoubtedly the snake, bartering work and information for cold sex until she is cast out of Eden, although this Eden is a long way from paradise. Sender is that rare creature: a deeply unpleasant Jew on film. He could easily have been reduced to caricature, but Christopher Eccleston's magnificent performance outlaws anything so banal. His voice is soft, his logic compelling and the price he asks is well below rubies. But Sonia eventually rejects the freedom he offers in favour of one she makes herself.
Credits
- Producers
- Lawrence Bender
- John Penotti
- Screenplay
- Boaz Yakin
- Director of Photography
- Adam Holender
- Editor
- Arthur Coburn
- Production Designer
- Dan Leigh
- Music
- Lesley Barber
- ©Miramax Film Corp
- Production Companies
- Miramax Films presents in association with Pandora Cinema in association with Channel Four Films a Lawrence Bender production
- Executive Producers
- Bob Weinstein
- Harvey Weinstein
- Line Producer
- Adam Brightman
- Co-producer
- JoAnn Fregalette Jansen
- Production Associate
- Anita Sum
- Production Co-ordinator
- Ellen Gannon
- Location Manager
- Seth Burch
- Stage Manager
- Jeremy D. Pratt
- Post-production
- Supervisor:
- Heidi Vogel
- Co-ordinator:
- Tracey D'arcy
- Assistant Directors
- David Wechsler
- Marco Londoner
- Rick Lange
- Script Supervisor
- Mary Gambardella
- Casting
- Douglas Aibel
- Associates:
- Jordan Beswick
- Dena Trakes
- Camera Operator
- Chris Hayes
- Steadicam Operator
- Andrew Casey
- Special Effects Co-ordinator
- John M. Ottesen
- Set Decorator
- Leslie E. Rollins
- Draftperson
- William Stabile
- Scenic Artists
- Laura G. Gillen
- Julius Kozlowski
- Cyd Fenwick
- Elizabeth Goodall
- Gary Wimmer
- Sculptures
- Elaine Houseman
- Costume Designer
- Ellen Lutter
- Wardrobe Supervisors
- Winsome McKoy
- Barbara Krauthamer
- Key Make-up Artist
- Lori Hicks
- Key Hairstylists
- John D. Quaglia
- Wayne Herndon
- Title Sequence Designer/Producer
- Dan Perri
- Titles
- Cinema Research Corporation
- Opticals
- Balsmeyer & Everett, Inc
- Music Conductor
- Ken Kugler
- Music Editor
- Dan DiPrima
- Music Engineer
- Stuart Brawley
- Soundtrack
- "Arovecha" by Orlando Valle, performed by Jesus Alemanys Icubanismoi; "Yo siempre oddara" by Guillermo Baretto, Jane Bunnett, performed by Jane Bunnett
- Sound Mixer
- William Sarokin
- Re-recording Mixers
- Sergio Reyes
- B. Tennyson Sebastian III
- Supervising Sound Editor
- Robert Fitzgerald
- Dialogue Editors
- Paul Curtis
- Frederick H. Stahly
- Stuv
- Sound Effects Editors
- Robert Fitzgerald
- Elizabeth Flaum
- ADR
- Group Co-ordinator:
- Burton Sharp
- Loop Group:
- Jerome Best
- Jake Chipps
- Joyce Goldman
- Henry Goldscher
- Eddie Herschler
- Bernard Hiller
- Winnie Hiller
- Lev Mailer
- Sally Rainer
- Burton Sharp
- Bill Stern
- Glen-Bob Sweet
- Shane Sweet
- Recordist:
- Jason Lezama
- Mixer:
- Jeff Vaughn
- Editors:
- Stuv
- Frederick H. Stahly
- Foley
- Artists:
- Joan Rowe
- Sean Rowe
- Katie Rowe
- Alan Kerr
- Mixer:
- Eric Thompson
- Editors:
- Jason Lezama
- John Chandler
- Cast
- Renee Zellweger
- Sonia Horowitz
- Christopher Eccleston
- Sender
- Allen Payne
- Ramon
- Glenn Fitzgerald
- Mendel
- Julianna Margulies
- Rachel
- Kim Hunter
- Rebbitzn
- John Randolph
- Rebbe
- Kathleen Chalfant
- beggar woman
- Peter Jacobson
- Schmuel
- Edie Falco
- Felga
- Tim Jerome
- Dr Bauer
- Phyllis Newman
- Mrs Gelbart
- Joyce Reehling
- Shaindy
- Shelton Dane
- Yossi
- Jackie Ryan
- young Sonia
- Faran Tahir
- Hrundi Kapoor
- Martin Shakar
- Mr Berman
- Teodorina Bello
- Mrs Garcia
- Glenn Flesher
- Chief Gabbal
- Adam Dannheisser
- young Gabbal 1
- Stephen Singer
- Gabbal 2
- Marvin Einhorn
- Gabbal 3
- Mark Zimmerman
- doctor
- Richard 'Izzy' Lifshutz
- the noel
- David Deblinger
- Baruch
- Sam Jennings
- Heshle
- Erin Rakow
- Tsipi
- Asher Tabak
- Yechlel
- Allen Swift
- Mr Fishbein
- Daryl Edwards
- Nelson
- Peter Slutsker
- Mr Sugarman
- Lauren Klein
- Sonia's mother
- Tonye Patano
- earring woman
- Don Wallace
- Ty
- Asia Minor
- Roseanna Plasencia
- homegirls
- Jerry Matz
- Mr Engelberg
- Michael Sthulbarg
- young Hasid
- Karen Contreras
- young woman
- Wai Ching Ho
- lady vendor
- Mel Duane Gionson
- paranoid vendor
- Paul J.Q. Lee
- smooth vendor
- Leyla Aalam
- Israeli woman
- Certificate
- 15
- Distributor
- Film Four Distributors
- 10,450 feet
- 116 minutes 7 seconds
- Dolby digital
- Colour by
- DeLuxe