# Price Above Rubies, A (1998)

### reviewed by
Kevin W. Welch

    A Price Above Rubies

The popular culture likes to think that community is good, family is good, all those emotional things that keep people bound to each other whether or not they want to be are good. If A Price Above Rubies has a message, its a cautionary one. Be especially careful of the ethnic group you are born into--it might bite you hard.

Sophia is married to a young up-and-coming scholar and yeshiva teacher; they are members of an otherwise unidentified Orthodox sect in Brooklyn. Sophia's father was a gemologist who taught his daughter a thing or two, but she has had to give that up until her brother-in-law, who owns a jewelry store in Manhattan and a smalller one with an elite clientele in the neighborhood, hires her on as a buyer. He has a rather novel way of conducting a job interview and Sophia and the brother-in-law are having an affair, a one-sided affair conducted mostly on one desktop or another.

Sophia's marriage is barren of passion--she has to subordinate her needs, especially her sexual needs to her husband, who is quite aware that God is in the bedroom watching them have sex. They have an infant son. Sophia wanted to name him Yossi, after her brother who died when he was ten (and who is still very much present). The husband instead names him after the Rebbe. Everything the husband does seems calculted to ingratiate himself to the Rebbe. The bright young scholar comes across as a brown nosing careerist.

Sophia is a good buyer, one who can spot a composite jewel ten yards away. She spots a gorgeous piece that she traces to a jeweler named Ramon, who works as a jewelry clerk by day and as a sculptor by night. She thinks he does the most beautiful work in the world and she wants to take him on, for either her good or for his. At this point, of course, everybody thinks she is having an affair with Ramon and she loses everything, absolutely everything. Such is the price of pursuing your muse.

The ethic of A Price Above Rubies is old-fashioned, in the sense that 70s-era look-at-me-ism is old-fashioned. It's a do-you-own-thing movie, where if you are in any sense a creative person you will find that any number of sacrifices are justified in the pursuit of who you are. Although I can strongly sympathize with Sophia, who is almost a dictionary definition of repression, I find that this message is out of place in the 90s where at least part of the popular culture celebrates family and origins and roots and responsibility and another part of the culture celebrates license. The movie has a quaint sensibility in its stance of sacrifice in the pursuit of the self.

Overall, Rubies gives a close look at a deeply religious milieu of the sort not often seen in recent movies. It looks at that milieu respectfully, though with full awareness of the damage it can inflict on nonconformist members. The plotting is a little too formulaic and some of the characterizations are a little too blunt and stereotyped (Juliana Margulies as the sister-in-law in particular plays an authority figure with little depth). The story relies a little too heavily on magic realism to get from point to point--the vision of the dead Yossi in particular seems like a crutch. Renee Zelwiger is good as Sophia, mixing just the right blend of frustration and edgy competence that blossoms when she gets a chance to show her stuff. The scholarly husband is a cypher, however, and that seems to make the choices Sophia faces too easy. With no sense of what she might be missing by leaving the Orthodox community, the film has to resort to extremes to show that her choice has costs. This is director Boaz Yakim's second film. His first, Fresh, was a far different look at a far different life and community. Fresh was one of the best films of the 90s. A Price Above Rubies is just sophomore slump.

    Kevin Welch
    kwelch@mailbag.com

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