Mona Lisa Smile
Maybe this is the worst part of the whole film: The incredible shallowness of the place of art in the film. It’s as if modern art is the exact opposite of conservative ideals (sadly, it is not) and classical art is the embodiment of traditions (luckily, it is not).
I could go on and on about the shallowness of the film, but it’s been done. Who cares. It’s not like you can expect anything like depth from a Julia Roberts film. Instead, you can be sure that, as long as she plays a cheerful character, you will be completely overwhelmed by her cheerfulness and the breathtaking smile, which turns her large mouth from a problem to an asset. Personally I have always liked the Julia Roberts type even when it’s a silly love comedy, and I generally like her as an actress.
But this film has so much more than just Julia Roberts. We see some of my absolute favorite youngsters including La Dunst, La Stiles and an absolutely wonderful Maggie Gyllenhaal (OMG I want to see “Secretary” now). I couldn’t care less about the girl who played Conny, but it’s not like she was dragging the cast unnecessarily. The way these people play together is perhaps the only reason why the film is a little bit better than your average silly chick flick; I have especially enjoyed Kirsten Dunst as the conservative yet strong-willed girl who, of course, ends up acknowledging what a wonderful person her teacher was. It is all very sappy, but this script makes those characters shine and I am perfectly happy with that.
Of course the storyline itself is relevant to my own interests. I have, to some degree, always wanted to be a “wife”, in some sense the partner to somebody greater and I know how incredibly untimely that is, and how it would be betraying femininity and all that. I am certainly not going to calculate the optimal temperature of a meat loaf, nobody would be satisfied with just that. But in some sense, the film is outdated – it is not the question of housewife vs. career woman anymore, it’s significantly more subtle than that. Or perhaps I should say that other questions, also apparent in the film, are more interesting: Why do “free-spirited” women need to be the ones who are being tossed aside? Why are you considered conservative if you want to marry and have a family?
The whole movie is so one-sided like its black-and-white view on art history, oh and I don’t even have to mention how I totally couldn’t care less about the main character’s awkward love story. (Her interaction with the students was indeed much more interesting.) There is almost no merit in the film besides the interaction of some of my favorite actresses in roles I was totally smitten with, but when it comes to that, the film certainly delivers.