Mona Lisa Smiles (2003)

The movie is a little different: It has 5 strong female leads. Name another movie with 5 strong female leads.

Katherine Ann (Julia Roberts) is the last-minute hire at a snobbish northeastern Women's College. She doesn't belong there, and the administration and students make sure she knows it. At the same time, Amanda (Juliet Stevenson) has somehow managed to be a lesbian and maintain her employment there for years... so if you don't quite fit in, you can stay. You just have to remain invisible and a non-problem. In Amanda's case, be a lesbian, but don't distribute birth control.

At first, it feels like Katerine Ann will likely try to "do things her way" while staying under the radar. She can teach to the syllabus AND add outside content. She can teach them what they need to know, as well as what she thinks they need to know. Basically, she can teach them how to think for themselves.

Throughout the movie, maybe she's still trying to figure out how to think for herself. How do we know when we are?

June (Julia Stiles), with Katherine Ann's encouragement, applies and gets accepted to Yale Law School. She decides to get married instead. Are we to see June as thinking for herself? We never learn if she has a happy marriage. The two women who do follow Katherine Ann's example, Giselle (Maggie Gyllenhaal) and Betty (Kirsten Dunst), only do so after relationships don't work out for them.

Connie (Ginnifer Goodwin) is a rather odd character to unpack, too. Is she supposed to be fat and ugly? She starts dating a guy who really loves her, but thanks to Betty, things don't work out. What would happiness have been for her? Just finding the one guy that likes fat and ugly women?

The movie isn't perfect, but I've watched it a couple of times, and I like its spirit. It's hard to know what elite 1950s Women's Colleges were like, but I'm willing to "buy in" to the vision presented in the film. I also like the title and the "mask" that the women are wearing, most of them not even knowingly.

Rating: 4.5/5 stars

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