Reviewers wary of Julia Roberts as the reactionary�s dream girl have made arguments that �Mona Lisa Smile� is actually an anti-feminist Trojan horse. The film�s generally congratulatory tone, telling the audience how much better we are now then we were then, seems to be saying that the fight is �now pretty much over.� (It�s more likely that �Mona Lisa� is looking at how far we�ve come, and it�s not saying that we�re finished. But bear with me.) �Mona Lisa�s� stuffed shirts are so stuffy and so bluntly villainous that a girl might leave the theater believing that, as long as she doesn�t behave as badly as a �1950s� housewife does, she could become the next Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Outdoing Marcia Gay Harden�s horn-rimmed spinster puts the bar pretty low, like saying that we�re not being racist as long as we don�t take part in lynching.
Lastly, if the girls are not dynamic characters, that means that only Roberts�s professor is. And what lesson does she learn? She learns to temper her fervor, not increase it. If the movie is a Trojan horse, then �Mona Lisa Smile� is actually more subtle than it seems. Or it�s even more of a colossal train wreck, setting out to do one thing but inadvertently resulting in doing the opposite. I suspect this is the case.
Finished September 27, 2004
Copyright � 2004 Friday & Saturday Night
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