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Mona Lisa
Smile
Rated PG-13
Katherine Watson
(Julia Roberts- Erin Brockovich, My Best Friend's Wedding), journeys from
California to the New England campus of Wellesley College in 1953 to teach
art history. She is under the impression that her students, the "best and
brightest" young women in the country, seek higher education as a means
toward careers. She discovers that the primary goal of her students is to
get married.
Her students comprise the female stereotypes of that era: snobbish
debutante Betty (Kirsten Dunst- Crazy Beautiful, The Virgin Suicides),
smart girl Joan (Julia Stiles- The Bourne Identity, Save the Last Dance),
bad girl Giselle (Maggie Gyllenhaal- 40 Days and 40 Nights, Adaptation)
and the shy nice girl Connie (Ginnifer Goodwin).
Despite an advanced curriculum at Wellesley, the class belongs to
Katherine's roommate, poise and elocution teacher Nancy Abbey (Marcia
Harden- Mystic River), a devastated woman that carries a torch for the
fellow who left her long ago. By being over 30 and unmarried, Katherine is
labeled "subversive."
Katherine and newlywed Betty become immediate enemies because Betty feels
threatened by her teacher's feminist independence. Meanwhile, Giselle
lives the life Katherine preaches as she smokes cigarettes, dates a male
professor and later a married man. Joan gets caught in the middle when
Katherine pushes her to apply to Yale Law School despite a proposal from
her boyfriend. Connie actually lands a boyfriend only for mean-spirited
Betty to interfere, mostly as a reaction to her own failing marriage.
All in all, the film was a great way to look at a woman's
role and understand how much it has evolved in the past 50 years. This is
a great chick flick for a group a women to go see.
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