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MONA
LISA SMILE
5/10
USA
2003 : Mike NEWELL : 119 mins
Massachusetts,
1953. A stuffy all-female college is shaken up by the arrival of free-spirited
Californian history-of-art lecturer Katharine Watson (Julia Roberts).
Most of her pupils love Katharine’s ‘modern’ methods, but it isn’t long
before she starts to meet trouble from some of the school’s more old-fashioned
elements. Despite all this, she still finds time to fit in a ‘forbidden’
romance with a hunky colleague Bill (Dominic West)...
After hitting
the box-office jackpot with with Four Weddings and a Funeral, veteran
British director Newell has specialised in films that examine ‘closed’
American communities. Having explored the Mafia in Donnie Brasco and
air-traffic controllers in Pushing Tin, he now turns back the clock
to trace the early stirrings of feminism.
Supposedly
inspired by Hillary Clinton’s college years, Mona Lisa Smile is
watchable enough as entertainment, but doesn’t deal very deeply with the
issues it tries to raise... and it’s ironic that a film about female empowerment
should be directed, written, produced, edited and shot by men. Roberts,
meanwhile, in her first proper lead role since Erin
Brockovich, is clearly back in Oscar-hunt mode. But she’s repeatedly
upstaged by her young co-stars – especially Maggie Gyllenhaal, proving
that her breakthrough in Secretary
was anything but a fluke.
1st
March, 2004
(seen 23rd January : Cineworld, Milton Keynes – CinemaDays
event)
by Neil
Young
Buy Mona Lisa Smile on DVD
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