A Price Above Rubies

A film set in a Hasidic community in New York. Sonia has just married. Her husband Mendel is a devout scholar and spends his days with religious texts. They have a child. Sonia is not happy. She does not entirely know why herself. She had a brother as a child. He died and since that day Sonia feels a fire; the narrative leaves it as both a desire and a guilt. Her husband does not touch her. He prays and is not interested in the physical world. Sonia has a gift. She knows stones; she looks at a jewel and sees its value and its flaw. Her brother-in-law Sender is a jeweller. He offers her work. From there the film is a story of leaving. Sonia works in the shop, meets suppliers, and steps outside the community. There is something else in Sender's offer. He begins a relationship with her and uses it as leverage. The community notices. Sonia is cast out and separated from her child. What the narrative is interested in is not religion but place: its idea is that the only place a woman can use her gift is outside the community she belongs to, and that the price of that choice is her child. There is Ramon as well. A Puerto Rican sculptor, the only person Sonia can talk to without hiding anything. The narrative does not draw the community as wholly dark but its criticism is clear; when the film opened it drew objections in some Hasidic circles. The use of colour is deliberate. Sonia's clothes darken steadily while the stones keep shining. Renée Zellweger, Christopher Eccleston, Julianna Margulies, Allen Payne and Glenn Fitzgerald are in the cast. Boaz Yakin wrote and directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes dramas about closed communities and woman-centred narratives. Who it is not for: anyone expecting an insider's account; the narrative describes the community from outside and some scenes carry too much symbolic weight.