My wife and I saw Mona Lisa Smile when it was out in theaters back in 2003 and at the time dismissed it as insipid feel-good fluff. But this past weekend after we got “slimed” by Easy A, we started talking about the remarkable confluence of young female acting talent assembled in Mona Lisa Smile (Kirsten Dunst, Julia Stiles, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Ginnifer Goodwin) and decided that it might be a good antidote to the crap we had just finished watching. And after all, Mona Lisa Smile was directed by Mike Newell, the director Enchanted April, which in my humble opinion is the greatest movie of all time. It was time to find out if we had indeed missed something.

Well, I’m not sure if it’s just because movies now-a-days are such trash, but Mona Lisa Smile is suddenly looking pretty damn good. It creates a moment in time and place for the viewer in a way that somehow does not feel like a period-piece (it’s a little like Enchanted April in that way.) Instead you are transported pleasantly and easily to Wellesley and get to look in on the lives of those that populated it back then.  The movie has a good score (one, I might add, that finds its way into a lot of previews these days.) The many scenes with the four young actresses are all really good – the dialog between them is generous, well-written and beautifully performed, and Newell created scenes of extended interaction of the kind you don’t see very often anymore in film. Each of the four characters develops in an unexpected way, and the influence of Julia Roberts on this development is (refreshingly) more subtle and believable than you would normally expect in this kind of film. The only real problem I see is Julia Roberts herself, but Mike Newell found a way to smooth over her tics and got her to project less “bombastic movie star” in the role, so that she actually didn’t bother me too much. It also helps that she is surrounded on all sides by solid actors and actresses who prop her up. I might add that Marcia Gay Harden is, as usual, fantastic in a supporting role.

Let’s talk about those great young actresses for a second. Let me go on the record here and declare that Kirsten Dunst recent substance abuse problems resulted in a huge loss for movies. That girl had serious talent! And talk about range! She could play serious, she could play silly, she could play romantic, she could play costume dramas, she could play sports movies. She could play spastic blond teenybopper comedy, then turn around and play a crazy teen on a downward spiral in a serious drama and make both characters equally indelible. And everything she tackled was played with such naturalness. She puts to shame Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning, who in comparison begin to look like one-trick-ponies (even if that one trick is really good.) And of course she created one of my all time favorite characters in film: Claire Colburn in Elizabethtown, a bizarrely wonderful performance that I’m not sure any other current actress could have pulled off.

I see from IMDB that it looks like Kiki might be inching her way back into film – I see she actually starred in a short based on the wonderful little Haruki Murakami short story The Second Bakery Attack, has several features in post-production, and she’s cast in a film version of On the Road which seems to be filming now. Let’s all hope that she makes a glorious comeback, so we’re not stuck watching Hayden Panettiere for the next twenty years.

Anyway, in Mona Lisa Smile, Kiki turns in a simply beautiful performance as a stifled, vindictive, privileged little rich girl that slowly wakes up to the realities of her life and finally starts to grow as a person. It’s the kind of understated performance that does not get a lot of credit these days – if you’re not playing a “Rain Man” role, or wearing a fake nose, forget it. Just the energetic difference in her performance between her character pre-transformation and post-transformation is to me a thing of real beauty.

Julia Stiles, another fabulous actress who has disappeared for a different reason (she exceeded Hollywood’s threshold of 1% body fat) is I think perhaps a tad miscast in this role, but she turns in a really good performance nonetheless. And of course she always has that incredible, sexy Jane Fonda voice going for her no matter what she plays. Maggie Gyllenhaal has to be one of the most effortlessly talented actresses around, even if she tends to stick to a few definite types of roles. Her performance here is like a breath of fresh air, perfectly contrasting with the staid demeanors of her classmates without ever crossing over into caricature. Ginnifer Goodwin, who has the same “problem” with non-anorexia that Julia Stiles does, turns in a bubbly yet carefully shaded and nuanced rendition of the “black sheep” character. Whatever you think of the film, seeing these four together is a treat.

Mona Lisa Smile – worth reconsidering, in my opinion. Seven years later, it’s looking pretty good.