Mona Lisa Smile Movie Review

Mona Lisa Smile Movie Review

Behind the doors of Wellesley college, a conservative liberal arts college was the home to the all girl students known as the girls with “claws under those white gloves”. They lived in one of the most conservative schools around taking place in Wellesley, Massachusetts. This was the world where Catherine Watson had wanted to teach there for a lifetime. So once a position in the college’s art history class had opened up she packed her bags and left her boyfriend and her home in L.A. But she did not come to Wellesley just to teach and art class, she came to make a difference. She told the girls to look beyond the paint on a canvas and to just have their own opinions. They didn’t have to be told how to think what other people told them to. In Wellesley, the girls thought that their life and obligation after they got the tassel hat taken from their head would be to get married and take care of their husband and children and to become the perfect wife. And that was what Catherine Watson planned to change. That was it. The end. The movie shows how women thought and acted in 1953 and takes you through their minds and ideas of life.

The main characters and actresses of Mona Lisa Smile are Julia Roberts who plays the independent and self determining bohemian woman Catherine Watson from her town in L.A. Kirsten Dunst as Betty Warren, the girl who refused to “look beyond the paint”. Julia Styles as the Wellesley girl who had a law degree and was president of each academic club yet only thought about the ring about to be placed on her finger, Joan Bradwin. Maggie Gyllinhaal as Giselle Levy the young woman who wanted to be independent and sufficient and follow Catherine Watson’s example. Ginnifer Goodwin as Connie Baker the kind and a little bit of a follower Connie Baker. Dominic West as the male professor with a not so wonderful reputation at the Wellesley college. And Juliet Stevenson as Amanda Armstrong.

Mona Lisa Smile takes place in, of course, Wellesley, Massachusetts. In the years of the nineteen fifties. It was written by Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal. It was then directed by Mike Newell. The movie was made in two thousand and three on the day, December twenty fourth.


Written by Genara Casey Gray Scott