"Mona Lisa Smile" - review

Last week we watched a film called "Mona Lisa Smile" and it was definitely a one to remember.
The 2003 American drama film is a reference to the Mona Lisa, the famous painting by Leonardo da Vinci, and to the song of the same name, originally performed by Nat King Cole, which was covered by Seal for the film. It is an inspiring film  that describes the principals and the education that was given to young girls at the Wellesley College, during the 50´s, based in Hillary Clinton’s experience at that same college. It’s visible that, during those times, the society had a really solid idea as to what women´s roles should be in the society, since they trained girls so they would get married at a young age and have, as their only role, standing by their man and staying at home, almost forbidding the idea of a former career. The main character, Katherine Watson (Julia Roberts), had recently graduated and decided to be an art teacher at Wellesley. Katherine as an obvious example of an opponent to those beliefs encouraged her students to stand up for themselves as she also did and to question the conventional assumptions about the lives they wanted to have.

At first Katherine is intimidated by the students. They seemed do know everything and had the "claws underneath their white gloves" that were ready to attack as a way to protect their status at the top of the social heap but during the film, we managed to see that Katherine tries to make them think further. They were programmed do be "perfect”, and by perfect, we mean a girl that was smart, had manners and knew how to behave. The Wellesley students are informed, "your sole responsibility will be taking care of your husband and children." This is not a priority Watson can agree with. She tells the conservative school president (Marian Seldes), "I thought I was headed to a place that would turn out tomorrow's leaders, not their wives." 

Katherine is the perfect example of an open minded woman that was inserted in the wrong decade because we can see the frustration that she feels when she hears all those statements by teachers and students. However she still tried to make a difference and install feminism on the school before that noun became globally known.

To summarize, this film represents a very unfair society where women didn’t go to college to have their own career, they were just being prepared for the domestic life  which is very different from what we are used to, giving us all the perspective of change that has taken place over the years.

Francisca Martins

Beatriz Costa

Beatriz Gonçalves