TV Times

TV Times

Mona Lisa Smiles at American Centre
‘Mona Lisa Smile’ a funny, inspiring and uplifting film about an art history professor with a lot to teach about life and much to learn about romance will be screened at the American Centre at 6.30 pm on Tuesday March 28 .
Academy Award winner Julia Roberts portrays Katherine Watson, a brilliant and ambitious young woman who comes to Wellesley College to teach art history.

In Revolution Studios' Mona Lisa Smile, Julia Roberts leads an all-star cast of prominent young actresses including Kirsten Dunst, Julia Stiles, Maggie Gyllenhaal and newcomer Ginnifer Goodwin, in a story of women struggling to define themselves in a world that has already defined them.
Directed by Mike Newell, screenplay written by Lawrence Konner, Mark Rosenthal, Mona Lisa Smile is produced by Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas, Deborah Schindler and Paul Schiff.

The film's feminist heroine, Katherine Watson (Roberts), journeys from California to the New England campus of Wellesley College in 1953 to teach art history. She labours under the misconception that her students, the "best and brightest" young women in the country, seek higher education as a means toward careers. To her horror, she discovers that the primary goal of her charges is to get married.

Her students comprise the female stereotypes of that era: snobbish debutante Betty (Dunst), smart girl Joan (Stiles), bad girl Giselle (Gyllenhaal) and shy wallflower Connie (newcomer Ginnifer Goodwin). The closet lesbian also is represented, albeit as school nurse Amanda (Juliet Stevenson), who has the audacity to hand out contraception to students.

Despite an advanced curriculum at Wellesley, the pivotal class belongs to Katherine's roommate, poise and elocution teacher Nancy Abbey (Harden), a spinster carrying a torch for the fellow who jilted her long ago. Battle lines form quickly. Simply by being over 30 and unmarried, Katherine is labelled "subversive." By teaching Picasso and Jackson Pollack, her class becomes an affront to social orthodoxy.

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 (Dominic West) and later a married man. Joan gets caught in the middle when Katherine pushes her to apply to Yale Law School despite an imminent 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.

These mini-soap operas serve mostly to belabour the '50s social rigidity. The film's dogged insistence in re-fighting the cultural wars of the '50s without shedding any new light on either side reduces nearly all the characters to shallow mouthpieces for predictable points of view. The American Centre requests fans to bring photo ID for entry and as the seating is limited entry is on first-come, first-served basis.

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