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REEL TO REAL
by Chuc LaVenture
NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA

A Price Above Rubies

Have you ever felt yourself at a place in your life where you just simply didn't belong? Or maybe you felt that you were so stifled by your environment that you felt you might explode? Well, that is where our heroine Sonia (Renee Zellweger) has found herself. Sonia is a young Jewish wife.

We meet her as she is giving birth to her son. When her son is brought to her she says the name "Yossi." Yossi was her older brother, now deceased, whom she told that she loved more than she loved God. She wants to name the baby Yossi but her husband has decided that their first born child should be named after his Rebbe (John Randolph), so that he will have the name of a holy man. Sonia's husband Mendel (Glenn Fitzgerald) is considered a great scholar and teacher at his Yeshiva.

Sonia craves the freedom to experience the world. She wants to make passionate love with her husband. She wants not to have her son go through his circumcision ceremony. She does not want to be told that God does not approve of her actions. Sonia craves experience so much that at a family dinner she becomes overwhelmed. Her sister-in-law Rachel (Julianna Margulies) takes her to a bedroom to calm her down. As Sonia folds into the comforting arms of Rachel-the-good-wife she attempts an intimate kiss. This leads to a session with the Rebbe in which Sonia again openly questions the infallibility of God.

To the rescue comes Mendel's brother Sender (Christopher Eccleston), who offers Sonia a job. Sonia's father was a jeweler under whose tutelage she became quite expert in the field herself. Sender, a jeweler himself, wants to open an illegal basement shop in the community for Sonia to operate.

She will get to do all the buying and selling, which means traveling to Manhattan three days a week. Of course Sender has a price for offering Sonia this freedom. Sonia becomes the manager of Sender's shop and begins to experience the world. She discovers the beauty, the ugliness, and the chance to find her soul.

She discovers on a buying trip a gold ring setting, in which she sees such beauty that she must find the maker. When she finds him she discovers that he works for the unscrupulous jeweler from whom she's been buying. Ramon (Allen Payne) is a stock-boy, who identifies his jewelry designing and sculpting as a hobby. Sonia sees in him her own repressed soul, living for others in communities that inform them that duty is their honor. Sonia's life as a Jewish wife and mother falls apart when Sender follows Sonia to Ramon's studio. On her return home she discovers that her husband's family has arranged for a divorce, taken her child and locked her out of her house.

Sonia finds herself without home or family, but not without friends, Yossi's ghost, a beggar woman who says that Sonia and she have a mutual friend, and in the end, the Rebbe's wife, who help her. Ultimately Mendel comes to understand Sonia and in the process comes to know himself. He retrieves his son from Rachel-the-good-wife and searches out Sonia. When he finds her at Ramon's he tells her that she should come to see her son, and gives her a gift for the birthday that he had forgotten. They admit to each other that neither has missed the other, and they part amicably.

Should you want to know what the rubies are all about, go see the movie. The acting in this movie is flawless. Renee Zellweger's scenes of emotional discomfort are heart wrenching. When she finally puts Sender in his place, the anger and the satisfaction are palpable. Julianna Margulies is intense as Rachel-the-good-wife, all quiet authority and cast iron will, yet submissive to her husband. The plot is smooth, moving from Rachel's initial dissatisfaction, to her period of discovery, to her final claim of freedom with no jolting emotional changes. This movie was for me quite the emotional roller coaster. It is currently playing at Canal Place.

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