Dir. Mike Newell, USA, 117 mins
Cast: Julia Roberts, Kirsten Dunst, Julia Stiles, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Dominic West, Juliet Stevenson
Mona Lisa Smile is set in 1953 and Katherine Watson (Roberts), an art history professor from California, travels to New England to teach at the esteemed university for women Wellesley College. For her it's an ambition realized and Katherine is intent on 'making a difference' to her pupils' lives. However her intentions are soon ambushed when she discovers that the College spouts values designed to make its super bright girls highly desirable in the marriage market instead of on the career ladder.
Katherine uses her lectures to get them to 'think'; an approach that gets her into trouble with her bosses - and students. Most troublesome is the soon-to-be-hitched Betty (Dunst) who takes every opportunity to undermine Katherine. She's given less of a hard time from others. These include Joan (Stiles), who is torn between her forthcoming engagement and a chance to study law at Yale; Giselle (Gyllenhaal), who is having an affair with Professor Bill Dunbar (West); and Connie (Ginnifer Goodwin), who believes strongly that she will end up on-the-shelf.
It isn't long before Katherine wins them all over, making hers one of the most popular classes. Despite this, the Wellesley academia insists that she must change her progressive approach if she is to continue teaching. Whilst encouraging her students to fly in the face of what's mapped out for them and take charge of their own destinies, Katherine too has to decide whether to conform in order to live her dream.
The premise of 'new hippie teacher with subversive ideas attempts to teach her charges to seize the day and make something of their lives' isn't new; Dead Poet's Society in dresses! Still, you could forgive the rehashing of the plot if it had something interesting to say. After all, it's set in interesting times with 50s feminism on the cusp of the women's liberation movement. But Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal's (Planet of the Apes; Jewel of the Nile) incredibly weak script badly lets down its A-list cast of Hollywood 's bright young things.
The script is riddled with cliché's no more so than in its characterizations: Betty the bitch; Joan the brainbox; Giselle the slut and Connie the fat, ugly one. Given the storyline, it's easy to accept this mix as necessary. Yet here the screenwriters assume that further character development is not needed. The result is a group of thinly sketched one-dimensional characters.
The annoying thing is that there is a spark of something more interesting going on with these girls. Giselle moves rapidly from student sleeping with her lecturer to student stalking her lecturer. It's clearly hinted that there is more to her, but we never get to find out. Equally we discover that the etiquette teacher Nancy Abbey (Gay Harden) has a tragic past, but this is reduced to her getting drunk and emotional at a party. The film glosses over the serious issues around the social constraints the women are under, and deny the actresses - who do very well with the script they are given - the chance to get to the underbelly of their characters.
Further, the script's depiction of a boho lecturer in the 50s is too rigid - Katherine's too 21st century. She's incapable of empathising at all with her students' beliefs. Surprising when you understand that she must have gone through the same dilemmas herself. Also, the role isn't helped by Roberts' portrayal of her. The depth she brought to Erin Brockovich is missing. In one scene Katherine takes her students to an underground art workshop where Jackson Pollock reveals his new painting. Katherine instructs her students to look at and think about the painting. They ruminate, cogitate and digest Pollock's latest offering. But for all the feedback the audience gets from Roberts, they may as well be looking at the walls of a public urinal.
Despite the flawed script, the film isn't entirely without its high points. The verbal volleyball between Katherine and Betty in the class provides the film with its more fiery moments. Juliet Stevenson, in her all to brief stint as lesbian nurse Amanda Armstrong with a caps on campus approach to contraception, is excellent.
It's just a shame that some of the film's more thought provoking ideas remain trussed up, very much like the women in corsets of the day.
Sandi Chaitram
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