A Price Above Rubies

Sonia (Zellweger) is in trouble. Her husband Mendel (Fitzgerald) is a Jewish religious scholar who makes love 'under the eyes of God', that is shamefully and infrequently. Meanwhile Sonia's turned on even by the baby at her breast. She doubts it is in her heart to be the wife of a holy man. There's little sympathy for her within NYC's Orthodox community, so when her brother-in-law Sender (Eccleston) fucks her against the wall and then asks her to buy jewels for his basement store, she goes with it. But in finding herself, must Sonia lose everything else? This tyro effort is a disappointment, a stilted emancipatory drama which neither illuminates its milieu nor transcends it. The tone is sober and subdued, but writer/director Yakin risks derisory laughter when Sonia confesses her frustration to the venerable Rebbe, inadvertently waking his dormant libido - followed by a cut to the elder's funeral. The film is every bit as phony as Hollywood pap, but with its excruciatingly high-minded penchant for symbolism, metaphor and speechifying, it is altogether too precious to permit the lowly pleasures of melodrama.