neumu [ cinematronic ]




	Mona Lisa Smile
	Mike Newell Julia Roberts, Kirsten Dunst, Julia Stiles, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Ginnifer Goodwin, Dominic West, Marcia Gay Harden, Juliet Stevenson, John Slattery, Topher Grace 2003		Along with a blitz of ingenue acting power that registers off the charts, the quasi-feminist period piece "Mona Lisa Smile" is fueled by Julia Roberts' billion-dollar smile — the highest-wattage tooth-baring in all of Moviedom. The drama is a distaff "Dead Poets Society," seeing the stately, tradition-stifled world of all-female Wellesley College in the early '50s from the point of view of young, dedicated, nonconformist art professor Katherine Watson (Roberts). She travels from Northern California to New England to teach the best and the brightest, only to discover that the academically esteemed Wellesley is more like a finishing school for patrician wives. Her students, each one a stereotype with a plot-convenient personality trait, are either won over by her earnestness and independence or they're suspicious, appalled and hostile. It's a vehicle for Roberts, but Kirsten Dunst, Julia Stiles, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Ginnifer Goodwin as undergrads give the film most of its fleeting appeal. Director Mike Newell ("Four Weddings and a Funeral") gets them to transcend the obvious aspects of their characters. No matter how tangible they seem, "Mona Lisa Smile" never strays far from a formula as old as 1939's "Goodbye, Mr. Chips." With Marcia Gay Harden and Juliet Stevenson.