Mona Lisa Smile starts with an art teacher in an old-fashioned school with strong principles and traditions.
Indeed, traditions that want the woman as a partner and wife but not a real person can exist independently without a husband’s presence.
For the purpose of awakening some girls’ souls thanks to her love for art, she will start a big change helping them living and thinking independently.
But the old guard school disagree with her progressive ideas, making his life and work difficult even with some of her own students’ help.
Very soon becomes clear that she will have to choose: keeping the career or really helping her girls.
Mona Lisa Smile is an exciting story of female rebellion in the upper and wealthiest classes of society. In addition, a consideration of what art truly is, without the judgment of someone considered to be an expert.
Julia Roberts is absolutely compelling as the main protagonist of the story. A delightful woman with a luminous smile and strong and determined not to give in to her ideas and beliefs.
A woman initially not well accepted by her students, especially those played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, Kirsten Dunst, and Julia Stiles.
3 very different girls who seem to have a clear idea of what they want from life. Later, painfully change their mind discovering that their ideal dreams are nothing more than lies covered in hypocrisy.
But the stubborn teacher will teach them to live outside the box already prepared for them even before their birth.
An excellent movie directed by Mike Newell. who leaves behind the comedy atmosphere of his Four Weddings and a Funeral in favor of more serious, mature, and dramatic themes.
Mona Lisa Smile was released in 2003, obtaining the public’s favors, thus rewarded it with excellent box office results.
Even today, it remains an excellent manifesto of independence and freedom and a good female version of Dead Poets Society.
