Author: Sean Astin

Brand: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment

Format: NTSC

Release Date: 01-06-2010

Details: Amazon.ca After directing films as varied as Four Weddings and a Funeral or Donnie Brasco, Mike Newell continues his eclectic path with Mona Lisa Smile, a look at the beginnings of feminism in 1950s America. In 1953, Katherine Watson, a recent graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), accepts a position as an art history professor at Wellesley College, a conservative institution where young women from good families are trained to become perfect mothers and wives. Miss Watson is convinced that she will succeed in opening new horizons for her students by urging them to think for themselves. Although the script for Mona Lisa Smile raised fears of a simple feminine copy-paste of Dead Poets Society, the result proves to be original. The young professor (a Julia Roberts not always in tune) does not seek to galvanize her troops (Kirsten Dunst, Julia Stiles, and Maggie Gyllenhaal at the forefront) by tossing out catchy slogans, but rather to accompany them on the path to emancipation. Without being overly simplistic, the film makes us feel the weight of the conventions these women had to endure. Although multiplying subplots of varying utility and failing to quite find an adequate rhythm, Mona Lisa Smile has the merit of providing a fairly accurate portrait of this generation of 1950s women who were taught docility as a primary virtue. – Helen Faradji.

UPC: 043396283862

EAN: 0043396283862

Languages: English

Binding: DVD

Item Condition: UsedVeryGood