Mona Lisa Smile

I assumed this was another Julia Roberts romantic comedy. But its more than that. Julia is art history teacher Katherine Watson, in her first session at the all girl Wellesley, at the beginning of the 1953-54 first semester. This film is a blend of many films: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, the two movie Peyton Places, all of the Douglas Sirk soap operas of the fifties, even some of the stuff from Valley of the Dolls. The movie the Group is referenced in Mona Lisa Smiles. Mostly, its a womans picture. There aren't many of those, so that's worth quite a lot on its own. Julia has left a boyfriend in California, where she comes from. There are four young girls in her class who are played by all the coming twenty something actresses who have been scoring in teen films for the past eight years. They include Kirsten Dunst who attracted attention in Dick, the comedy about two teenage girls actually who somehow sparked the 1970s watergate scandal. Julia Stiles plays a potential Yale Law school candidate who needs a little push from Miss Watson. Wellesley is blatantly pushing marriage rather than career in 1953, and conformity in teaching too. Miss Watson gets in trouble for just talking about Van Gogh, mentioning Picasso and taking the girls to see a Jackson Pollock unveiled at a gallery. Unbelievable for 1953. This movie is laying it on way too thick. Maggie Gylenhaal, who I have seen somewhere, is the most interesting of the four girls. She smokes and is the child of a broken marriage. She is having an affair with Bill Dunbar, the romantic rake teacher at school, who has his eye on Miss Watson too. This plot line is straight out of Jean Brodie, where Jean's brightest student is having an affair with the art teacher Teddy. Dunbar is played by Dominic West, who is a touch softened from the philandering plumber Renee Zelwegger killed in the opening scenes of Chicago last year. Julia Roberts is not allowed to play the Art History Teacher Miss Watson realistically, because this is a star vehicle and the producers think the audience wants the usual star turn from Roberts. The film could have been a lot better if there was an attempt to make a real story here. Julia Roberts just isn't convincing as a Bohemian upstart attempting to turn around the academic culture at Wellesley. Roberts has come to Wellesley with a reputation for having had an affair with William Holden while a student at UCLA. The girls think that's magic, but Roberts seems too rigid for William Holden. Kirsten Dunst, pressured by her blueblood mother, somehow gets married to a college sweetheart before the first semester is over. Its not clear whether these girls are freshmen or seniors. Dunst is living in a lavish home off campus. Her husband, roughly the same age, is in a law firm in Philadelphia, and though only 24 himself, affects a pipe, wears a hat and acts as if he's fifty. Its a joke. The whole film laughs at itself quite a lot. When Miss Watson is taken to Mr. Dunbar's rustic digs after they have gotten together, I notice a still of Rock Hudson on his wall. Why would Dunbar have that? The dilemmas these girls face are often a joke. Miss Watson is a 2003 liberated woman trying to raise the consciousness of this 1953 group of girl caricatures Wellesley is trying to pressure into marriage. The script is so simple, even Sirk would have insisted on a rewrite. The scenes are shot in a variety of film styles, some of them modern, but many of them in the Sirk manner of the fifties; films which starred Jane Wyman, Rock Hudson,Susan Hayward, Lana Turner, etc. Mona Lisa Smile also has a great before rock 'n roll soundtrack, with the offbeat stuff the silent generation was digging while Elvis was still driving truck in Memphis: Sh-Boom, Mona Lisa by Nat King Cole, Constantinople, by a choral group, which I haven't heard since those days. They found a load of tunes that have not, to my knowledge, been tapped for a soundtrack before, including Santa Baby, an Eartha Kitt Christmas novelty from that time. People perform some of these at dances. Perform isn't actually the word. The songs are sent up by the performers. There are many stereotyped performances, on purpose, to capture that fifties idiocy so popular these days. The film, like other recent nostalgia, often invites the audience to feel superior to the events and stereotyped characters. Miss Watson's landlady at the rooming house is purposely played for ridicule and pathos. She is in savage contrast to Miss Watson, of course. The landlady is constantly watching TV, which Miss Watson turns up her nose at. The landlady has lost her husband in the war, but has become so pathetic she is unlikely to get another. Just another Wellesley casualty, the film implies. A better film could've been made out of this material, but this one's better than no film at all. I liked it quite a bit. I'm surprised its is as good as it is. A montage of old advertising and TV stills which show what cornball roles women were assigned, is shown at the end while credits roll. This is a film to see while waiting for Cold Mountain to come around.