‘Mona Lisa’ smiles but you may not

ALLEN MACDONALD

The title refers to the ambiguous grin on the subject of Leonardo

DaVinci’s most celebrated portrait, but it also is a reference to the

theme: that 1950’s America was an oppressive time for young women,

who were increasingly besieged by pressure at home and in the media

to be the perfect, happy housewife whose sole reason for existing was

to be a pillar of support for her hard-working man. To be submissive.

To sacrifice her own dreams to help realize those of her male

counterpart. However, many of these women had dreams of their own,

and they were forced to “smile” on the surface when inside they felt

nothing but pain. It’s an ironic metaphor since this is a movie that

on the surface seems promising -- it’s beautifully shot, edited and

acted -- but its gorgeous exterior conceals an empty heart.

Julia Roberts plays Katherine Watson, a new art teacher at the

prestigious Wellesley school for girls in Massachusetts. She arrives

to the campus hoping to make a difference in the lives of some of the

most brilliant female minds in the country. That’s exactly what she

finds: Girls who pursue a college education, then immediately

squander it by giving into the social pressure to marry well and

start a family. At first, the girls are ready to eat Katherine alive,

but she soon is inspiring them to think for themselves. As if there

was any doubt. When at first the girls pride themselves at memorizing

art pieces and the accepted (“by the right people”) interpretations

of them, Katherine challenges them to come up with their own opinions

and fight for them.

And this is the most infuriating thing about “Mona Lisa Smile”: it

purports to be controversial and thought-provoking when it’s actually

about as safe, non-offending and politically correct as you can get.

It’s two-hours-plus of platitudes.

As hard as the first-rate cast tries to fill out their characters,

their cliched origins cut them off at the knees: Giselle Levy (the

magnificent Maggie Gyllenhaal) is the promiscuous one with a penchant

for her male faculty members. She also can’t seem to stretch her

blood alcohol as high as she’d like. Giselle does these things, as we

later find out, because her parents got divorced after World War II

ended -- her soldier father came back a stranger and took it out on

everyone. Joan Brandwyn (Julia Stiles) is a brilliant young woman

who’s torn between her ambitions to attend Yale Law School and her

desire to have a family. Amanda Armstrong (Juliet Stevenson) is the

“pretty ugly girl,” which means she’s gorgeous, but in the world of a

Hollywood movie, she’s the unattractive one because she’s 15 pounds

heavier than the other girls. And finally, there’s Betty Warren

(Kirsten Dunst), whose brutal honesty and cruel nature is really a

defense mechanism against the deep-rooted fears about pleasing her

brutally honest and cruel mother. At her mother’s behest, Betty has

bought into the homemaker fantasy, married while still in college,

but soon finds herself in a loveless marriage with an apathetic,

philandering husband. Betty’s killer instinct makes her dangerous,

and she’s used her weekly newspaper column to end more than one

faculty career. This makes Betty a natural adversary to Katherine,

which lets the audience know that the person who most needs

Katherine’s help will be the one she may be unable to reach.

The main problem is the script: It isn’t bad, but it’s uninspired.

And this is material that needs to be inspiring. What you get instead

is a movie that is trying too hard, and when I feel my buttons

getting pushed I become detached and simply don’t care. You know when

the writers are setting up a plot twist, and you can pretty much

guess what that twist will be. A screenplay needs to be organic and

natural. The material needs to be ripe for the cast to bring it to

life. Instead, the plot machinations are exposed and obvious -- you

see the story machine working -- which detaches you when you should

be absorbed.

* ALLEN MacDONALD, 30, recently earned a master’s in screenwriting

from the American Film Institute in Los Angeles.