Grin and Bear It

TEETH TOGETHER, LIPS APART: Julia Roberts (with Dominic West) flashes her pearly whites.

Mona Lisa Smile should heed its own lesson: Be yourself.

by Cindy Fuchs

As Mona Lisa Smile’s Berkeley-educated art history teacher, Katherine Watson, Julia Roberts doesn’t do much smiling. Arriving at Wellesley in 1953, the first-time instructor runs smack into the stodgy stiffs who dampen spirits and toe lines in movies of this sort -- movies where the plucky protagonist resists the rules and endeavors to rescue her students from their sure-to-be humdrum fates. If only they might learn to smile as poignantly as their brilliant mentor.

One of these students ostensibly narrates Katherine's story, from her first day to her last: Initially dismissive of her new "bohemian" professor, Betty (Kirsten Dunst) believes her mother's decree that she must marry and keep a well-appointed house to be happy. Other students in need of re-education include familiar types: Like Betty, Joanie (Julia Stiles) is engaged, but she also wants to go to law school; "plain girl" (and cellist) Connie (Ginnifer Goodwin) is desperate just to have a boyfriend; and freethinking Giselle Levy (Maggie Gyllenhaal) is sleeping with her charismatic Italian teacher, Bill (Dominic West), who in turn sets his sights on Katherine.

Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal's predictable script situates Katherine between prissy, pathetic roommate/home-ec teacher/I Love Lucy fan Nancy (Marcia Gay Harden), and lesbian roommate/school nurse Amanda (Juliet Stevenson), forthwith fired for distributing condoms. When school newspaper editorialist Betty labels Katherine "subversive," the battle between backward and forward thinking is on.

Following a first-day classroom disaster (students have already memorized the textbook), Katherine resolves to challenge their stuffy assumptions. She exposes them to Chaim Soutine's Carcass of Beef, Jackson Pollack and paint-by-numbers Van Gogh (as an example of what "society" is doing to art). She attends a drinking party hosted by the girls' "secret society" (named, tellingly, the Adam's Ribs), where she confesses her own romantic backstory, and so wins over even more converts for her daring (she's rejected marriage on purpose).

Still, Betty and her sniffy ilk hold more cards, threatening Katherine's job should she persist in pushing her newfangled philosophy. As she is equally judged by her classmates, the lovely and generous Giselle is most visibly beguiled by Miss Julia; she's the most convincing audience stand-in (though the group seems something like a boy band, meaning that you might choose any of them as a way in, save mean girl Betty). This might be the film's most interesting notion, positing the Jewish girl among the WASPs as its most explicitly appealing character.

Still, Katherine takes up the vast majority of the spotlight, conveniently literalized in the classroom when she stands before the projected beam of the slide projector. In her last, bravura performance in this capacity, she shows a series of circa-'50s advertisements, featuring women making meat loaf, cleaning house and wearing girdles that set them "free." "What does that mean?" she asks, her forehead vein bulging with frustration. For one thing, it means cookie-cutter roles are maddening, then and now. Can we please move on?

Mona Lisa Smile

Directed by Mike Newell A Sony Pictures release Opens Friday at area theaters.

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