A Price Above Rubies

(Miramax)

Writer/director Boaz Yakin's feminist parable set in a contemporary Chassidic community stars Renée Zellweger as Sonia, an irrepressibly self-assertive young woman with hot erotic flashes. Her traditionalist man-child husband (Glenn Fitzgerald) is astute in the Torah but repulsed by such non-reproductive niceties as disrobing or pleasure. The characterizations are uncompromising and the performers (Zellweger most of all) courageous.