A Price Above Rubies (1998)
About a young woman who is married to a devout Jew and the problems that trouble their marriage because of the woman wanting something more out of her life.
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Being Jewish on the American screen has always meant suffering indignities, whether historical, as in The Life of Emile Zola, or hysterical, as when Sam Goldwyn (né Goldfish) forced Danny Kaye (né Kaminsky) to bleach his hair blond because, "Let’s face it, Jews are funny looking." Tough as it’s been to be openly Jewish, it’s always been worse to be Orthodox. By the end of The Jazz Singer, Al Jolson gets to conquer the stage (and his Yiddishe mama), but his stern cantor father who ordered him out of the house conveniently drops dead — assimilate, you win; don’t, you die. Orthodox Jews have rarely made it onto the screen since then, and when they have, it’s either to embody…

Boaz Yakin’s romantic drama with Renée Zellweger as a New York housewife who struggles for independence within the strict Hasidic community.

The story concerns Sonia (Renée Zellweger), a married Hasidic woman in Brooklyn, New York, whose husband, Mendel (Glenn Fitzgerald), is careless. She starts having an affair with Mendel's brother, Sender (Christopher Eccleston), who permits her to work in his ornaments corporate.

There, she encounters a Puerto Rican artist and architect called Ramon (Allen Payne), with whom she finds a strong bond. When Sender finds out of her love for Ramon, he sets out to banish her from her husband and family.

Renée Zellweger gives an okay performance in her part as Sonia, the married woman up to no good…

ORIGINALLY WRITTEN IN 1998

I don't think I was supposed to laugh in A PRICE ABOVE RUBIES, but a couple of writer/director Boaz Yakin's (early) plot points are damned difficult to take. Renee Zellweger (JERRY MAGUIRE) plays a straight, sexually frustrated Hasidic housewife, who, in the first of two howl-worthy moments, attempts to plant a kiss on her sister-in-law when a neck massage starts gettin' good. She's sent to the Rabbi's office, where he gets a wicked woody while listening to her story and dies of a heart attack the next day, after makin' the moves on the Mrs. I nearly threw my clipboard into the air, but didn't. Nor did I walk out, which I should've. There are many…