A Price Above Rubies

Monday, May 11, 2009 6:22 | Filled in 1. MOVIES - OVERVIEW

Cast: Renée Zellweger, Christopher Eccleston, Julianna Margulies, Allen Payne, Glenn Fitzgerald, Kim Hunter, Kathleen Chalfant and John Randolph

Director: Boaz Yakin

Writer: Boaz Yakin

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In the movie A Price Above Rubies, Renée Zellweger is a young Brooklyn woman, Sonia Horowitz who is married into a Jewish community and finds it hard to adapt to the rituals and restrictions imposed on her.

Boaz Yakin, the writer and director of the film is a son of Jewish parents himself, who sent him to an orthodox privat school when he was five years old and it was that experience that gave Yakin the inspiration for the story. The title of the movie itself, is a biblical quote from Proverbs 31:10, which says in the King James version: ”Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies.”

Glenn Fitzgerald plays Sonia’s husband, Mendel Horowitz a devout Hasidic and a scholar who is too occupied in his studies and teaching to give his wife the attention she needs.

Sonja has just given birth to her first child, a son and is in a arranged marriage. Mendel’s brother, the jeweller Sender (Christopher Eccleston), notice Sonja’s frustration and offers her a job in the jewellery business knowing that Sonja was raised in that business herself.

Sonia blooms in the business and develops a relationship with Sender and he becomes the only release for Sonia’s repressed sexuality. But when Sonja developes, through the jewellery business a close connection with the young Puerto Rican artist and jewellry designer Ramon (Allen Payne), and the family hears of it, she is ostracized from the family…