Arriving at Wellesley College for a brand new academic year in 1953, art-history
teacher Katherine Watson (Julia Roberts) is excited about her first opportunity
to mold minds and confront her students' preconceptions of life. What she gets
is a class full of overachievers (including Maggie Gyllenhaal, Julia Stiles, and
Ginnifer Goodwin) who are biding their time until they can graduate, get
married, and promptly have babies - thus ending their potential. Katherine is
aghast at this thought, and soon pushes them to better their lives through
education and simple questioning of their true purpose. She gets through to most
of the students, but one in particular (Kirsten Dunst) is appalled by
Katherine's beliefs and independence, and will do her best to squash it before
it sweeps up the entire campus.
A teacher breaking through her icy students and setting them intellectually free
is not terribly new ground for a movie to cover. "Mona Lisa Smile" IMDb listing) attempts to
twist the formula around a bit by providing a female perspective on the subject
of education's ability to blow minds. "Smile" is a period film set in the 1950s,
when women were still strictly second-class citizens. The film gets amazing mileage exploiting the
injustices against women during this era, mostly at the expense of the male
characters. Director Mike Newell ("Four Weddings and a Funeral," "Donnie
Brasco") doesn't seem to mind that his film is violently anti-male. His disheartening direction of the guys in the film to
inflict as much emotional pain on the females as they possibly can
renders all of them one-dimensional repressive monsters. Yeesh! All this is
arranged so the main ideas of "Smile" are more pointedly executed and easily
understood by the teen girls in the audience who might not have a grip on life
outside of the last two decades. But for the story and the overall film, it
dilutes the message and turns "Smile" into a soap opera in the worst sense. For
a script about forward-thinking and progression, it sure is filled with
regressive attitudes and reprehensible depictions of the relationships between
men and women.
What Newell does capture with ease is the claustrophobia the characters feel as
they attempt to break away from the routine. The goal for these women is
marriage, with Newell creating a tight world of campus suspicion and societal
prompts for the girls to keep to the traditional routes of a respectable woman.
"Smile" has the outside appearance and initial construction of being another
teacher-changes-student movie, with Katherine testing the girls' knowledge of
modern art - including one scene where she takes the girls on a field trip to
see a painting by Jackson Pollock. But this is all a big red herring, because
the film soon settles into an overdramatic vibe where each of the characters
gets screwed over by a man, then destroys the happy life of the person
immediately next to them. This takes the overall heart and point right out of
the story, which is illustrated by the total lack of ending to the picture.
Without a buildup to a climax, "Smile" dissipates slowly, and disappoints in its
reluctance to take the claustrophobic atmosphere anywhere besides the obvious.
Again, the film is set in 1953, but one would never know that by looking at star
Julia Roberts. Katherine thinks outside of the box, and Roberts plays her with a
modern wink in her eye to sell the reasoning behind her refusal to wear period
clothes or follow period cosmetics. Still, there is a nagging undertow of
disbelief in Roberts' characterization when she looks and acts like she just
stepped off the set of "Ocean's Eleven." This can be swept under the rug with an easy "it's the character" explanation. But let's get real.
The rest of the cast hugs tight to the fashion and attitudes of the time, and it
doesn't make sense to see Katherine get to the position she's attained without
playing by some of the rules. It snaps the credibility "Smile" is looking to
achieve like a dry twig.
Actress Maggie Gyllenhaal does an impressive job delivering the film's only
honest performance as a student spitefully licking her wounds after an affair
with her professor. Newell's direction and the screenplay, which turns everybody
into idiots at the drop of a hat, destroy the rest of the cast. Kirsten Dunst
gets the worst of it, giving a shrill, quivering fit of a performance. Drag
queens everywhere will appreciate it. And Julia Roberts? Well, Newell gives us
the smile, the laugh, and the hair. Does anyone dare ask for anything else
anymore?
Filmfodder Grade: D+