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MONA LISA SMILE is a female version of DEAD POETS SOCIETY whipped up into a light, fluffy and sugary confection for the holidays. An all-girl school with every student as rich as Croesus, the students are academic overachievers who want nothing more than a wedding ring.¹

Julia Roberts stars in “Mona Lisa Smile” as Katherine Watson, a recent UCLA graduate hired to teach art history at the prestigious all-female Wellesley College, in 1953. Determined to confront the outdated mores of society and the institution that embraces them, Katherine inspires her students to challenge the lives they are expected to lead.²

Beautiful photography of the picture-perfect Wellesley campus combined with a perpetual parade of lovely period costumes makes MONA LISA SMILE a visual delight. Strong performances by each of the actresses, including Dunst uncharacteristically cast as a prim and proper prude, and Marcia Gay Harden as a boring tv-addicted spinster, only add to the splendor of this enjoyable film.³

Well, it doesn’t get any more interesting. Despite the quality cast and a director who made the brilliant Donnie Brasco, Mona Lisa Smile is devoid of enjoyment, intelligence or interest.⁴

But now, according to Dr. Margaret Livingstone, a Harvard neuroscientist, there is another, more concrete explanation. Mona Lisa’s smile comes and goes, she says, because of how the human visual system is designed, not because the expression is ambiguous.⁵

Mike Newell’s MONA LISA SMILE is a pretty period film that combines a quaint pedagogical tale with a feminist dissection of traditional female roles in 1950s society. Julia Roberts leads an impressive cast of top young actresses including Maggie Gyllenhaal, Kirsten Dunst, and Julia Stiles.⁶