On a final note, there are a number of women behind the scenes here (though not the director or writers, sadly): music, art direction, set decoration, and casting.
The ambition was kept in check, and so the movie does the minimum here, and not always so badly if the minimum will do. This could have been a better movie with the same basic story but lots better writing and directing. Of course, movies succeed on some level with stereotypes and this one does, too, so by the end we love all the feel good happiness even as we know it's ludicrous and manipulative. Even Roberts, who is supposed to be discovering her mixed up feelings about art and life on the east coast, is thinly drawn and barely fleshed out. The romances are not very vivid, the housewifery is canned and uncomplicated (almost drawn from the magazine ads that they keep showing in lectures on a big screen), and the characters themselves are simplified to the point of simplicity. There is a rivalry right away between Roberts and a goody-goody Dunst, who is pretty good at being an evil brat, and a sensuous modern student played by Gyllenhaal, who wants the same man Roberts seems to want. And then with the best credentials in the world they would become housewives. They went to get their degree, but also their Mrs., as they used to say. And it's true, lots of women were encouraged to be housewives even at good colleges. The movie is filled with these conflicts of what we think of as normal modern art (an overdone scene with Jackson Pollack is one example) and with the proper world these women are really supposed to inhabit. She automatically is lost at sea, but gradually wins over her students with such daring subjects as Van Gogh, who is presented as radical somehow, though conservative enough to become paint by numbers, too. Roberts is a "progressive" art teacher who for some reason has been hired at this ultra-conservative place. But the period looks terrific, the music and the dresses are fine, so the whole atmosphere frankly becomes the compelling center of the movie. So even the stellar cast-Julia Roberts, Kirsten Dunst, Maggie Gyllenhaal-can't give this the sincerity it needs. The writing is a little strained and forcing some of the sexist themes of the 1950s on the audience.
This is 1953 at a rich private and elite college for girls (a real one-it's called Wellesley). Download Darling Marathi Movie Songs, Download Darling Marathi Movie Songs.3gp, Download Darling Marathi Movie Songs. Mona Lisa Smile (2003) I had no idea the theme of this movie but I teach art history and the main opening scene is a true nightmare for an art history teacher-the precocious students knew everything before the teacher said anything, and then they sweetly got up and went to study hall because, of course, they might actually learn something there.