Mona Lisa Smile

Drama set in 1953 in Wellesley College, a prestigious women’s college in New England with a student population of young women from respectable, privileged families. On the whole the girls, products of a time when women’s roles were strictly defined, show more interest in marrying well than in achieving intellectual growth or artistic freedom. But when a new art history professor, Katherine Watson (Julia Roberts), begins teaching at the college, their repressed upbringings and narrow ideas are brought into question. A Berkeley graduate with progressive ideas, Watson sets out to stretch her students intellectually, and challenge their limited outlook on life.