Monalisa Smile

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I love this movie. I think all the ladies acting in it are great, but I particularly like Maggie Gyllenhall character, a very unconventional girl in an all-girls college that was meant to teach girls how to be the perfect housewife and how to make their husbands shine at the eyes of their colleagues adn bosses during business meals. Mona Lisa smile is the story of Katherine Watson played by Julia Roberts who travels from California to teach art at the college of Wellesley. The movie is set in the 50s at a time when women were nothing but an accessories for their husbands. Katherine is a woman ahead of her times. She is 30 something, un-married and with a passion for modern-art that she will start teaching to her students against the college's rules trying to open their minds and to make them think for themselves. At first most of her students are against her and try to boycot her, especially Betty, played by Kirsten Dunst, a real annoying and prude brat. At the end, when she discovers that her husband is cheating on her with another woman, Betty will take her future in her hands, go against her family and even be thankful to Ms Watson just like all the other girls that she taught to. The character I liked the most though, as I was saying earlier, is that of Giselle Levy, played by Maggie Gyllenhall...she sides up with Ms Watson from the start, being a very unconventional and controversial girl herself, dating older men, including one of her professors. I truly recommend this movie because it shows how women can be themselves and be independent wihtout needing a man to be someone. I think that even if feminism has gone a long way these days, there is still a long road ahead of women who are still considered somehow inferior to men in many parts of the world, so this movie is very good and real even these days.