December 01, 2003

Mona Lisa Smile

I've been genuinely impressed with some of the choices Julia Roberts has made lately, especially when she started (and hasn't really stopped) working with Stephen Soderbergh. OCEAN'S ELEVEN, FULL FRONTAL, CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND, ERIN BROCKOVICH, THE MEXICAN, even going back as far as CONSPIRACY THEORY, NOTTING HILL, and STEPMOM are all watchable, if not always successful, edgy endeavors. Because of this, I was a little let down by her latest work, MONA LISA SMILE, a return to safer ground for Roberts, but a film not without its highlights. Julia plays Katherine Watson, a rookie art history professor at the all-girls Wellesley College in the mid-1950s. She far more progressive and independent than any of the other teachers, and naturally her presence and influence on the girls polarizes the students and other faculty members. When she discovers that the school is essentially a finishing school for women who will aspire to nothing more than being the wives of successful men, she is furious and determined to not let that happen to her girls. The problem with Roberts is that she doesn't surprise us her. You can probably guess without even seeing the trailer how she's going to play this role. And if you have seen the trailer, well, you've seen the movie. She gets the job done, yes, but she isn't trying or challenging herself to play this part and it's a let down. As forward-thinking as she is, she still has time to fall for the school's hunky Italian teacher, Bill (Dominic West), who apparently sleeps with his students.

The upside of MONA LISA SMILE are the students. Kirsten Dunst, Julia Stiles, and Maggie Gyllenhaal are among Roberts' charges. Dunst is a little too patently mean, but Stiles and the sexually liberated Gyllenhaal really shine here. Stiles, whose character is on the pre-law track (although she has no intention of going to law school) becomes Katherine's project. She wants her to think of a life outside of simple being a wife and standing in someone else's shadow. Also doing fine work here in smaller roles are Juliet Stevenson, who appears all too briefly as Katherine's lesbian housemate and fellow professor, and Marcia Gay Harden as the third housemate, who has given up on men entirely as is content to become an old maid before she's 45, watching T.V. in a sort of sad contentment.

Director Mike Newell (FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL, DONNIE BRASCO, and 2005's HARRY POTTER entry) has a sure hand guiding his story and characters through one pseudo-drama after another, but there's nothing really inspirational here. I'm not knocking the film's pro-independent woman messages at all. Girl Power, and all that. But I can't imagine women or young ladies of today getting anything of substance from this film. In case you hadn't heard, women can vote and run companies and do all sorts of manly things already. And since I'm pretty sure the story of MONA LISA SMILE isn't based on a true story (I apologize if it is), this tale isn't being told as a historical biopic. So why is it being told? I'm not exactly sure. The acting is top-notch and the film's locations a stunning to look at, but there's a valuable piece missing here: relevance. It opens December 19.

Posted by sprokopy at December 1, 2003 02:58 PM