Mona Lisa Smile

Reviewed by Rich Drees

     The years following World War Two were a time when social change was being to ferment. Women, who had joined the workforce as part of the war effort in addition to raising families while their husbands were fighting overseas, were beginning to question the validity of the pre-War conceptions of their roles in life. It’s at this time in history that some people feel the modern feminist movement had its start and it’s this time in history that the film Mona Lisa Smile attempts to, albeit rather clumsily, examine.

     Katherine Watson (Julia Roberts) was not the first choice of Wellesley College’s administration to fill the position of art history professor. But after a previous candidate for the job accepted a position elsewhere, they are forced to hire her. But Katherine’s progressive out look on life is not a smooth match with the school’s overly conservative atmosphere, as she tries to encourage her students to be more than just the housewives and mothers that their 1950s society would have them be.

     Chief among her students are Betty (Kirsten Dunst), editor of the school’s newspaper and who is more than content to get married to her fiancée as soon as possible, and her friend Joan (Julia Styles), who doesn’t seem to understand Katherine’s insistence that she can both get married and pursue a law degree. Another student, Giselle (Maggie Gyllenhaal) is having an affair with Italian professor Bill Dunbar (Dominic West) with whom Katherine will also become involved. As the school year progresses, Betty speaks out against Katherine both in class and in the student newspaper. Things become worse after Betty’s wedding when she finds her husband away on business more than he is home. Katherine finds herself torn between the man she left behind in California and her attraction to Bill.

     If the story sounds familiar, it’s because it bares more than a passing resemblance to 1989’s Dead Poets Society with a feminist message grafted on and Julia Roberts replacing Robin Williams in the progressive teacher out to inspire his or her students. While there is nothing wrong with the film’s desire to portray the 1950s as a time when women were trying to determine their place in society, it’s just that the script does so in a rather clunky, ungraceful manner. The film goes out of its way to stress the point repeatedly and in many variations. Roberts’ character repeated tells her students both in class and individually that they don’t have to be bound by society’s expected roles for them but that they can be anything they want to be.

     The film also goes repeatedly out of its way to show how conservative the Wellesley faculty is. Katherine’s character is repeatedly told not to do controversial things like teach about modern art or in any way to try and deter her students from their path of becoming dutiful housewives. But in it’s zeal to illustrate this over and over, the script does make some illogical choices. Early in the film, we are introduced to a member of the school’s faculty who gets fired for supplying students with birth control, even though it’s stated that it was an open secret for much of this character’s 20-year tenure at the school that she was gay. I find it hard to believe that if the school is as conservative and concerned about its public appearance as the film wishes us to believe, that the character’s homosexuality would have been tolerated for all that time.

     Another troubling aspect in the film’s script is its dogged determination to give virtually every character’s storyline some sort of twist or reversal of fortune in the third act. By the time the credits roll, everyone seems to learn a life lesson like some over blown 1980s episode of The ABC After School Special. While some of these twists do make sense in the context of their individual storylines, by the time the third one is ready to rear its head, you’re already anticipating it.

     The cast handles itself well, keeping the material from becoming too melodramatic, despite the insistences of the script. The 1950s period detail is accurate expect for Roberts’ hair which looks much more modern. If it’s an attempt to show that her character is ahead of her time, than it’s a fairly heavy-handed one and potentially distracting for people who are interested in the period.