Mona Lisa Smile (Julia Roberts)

(Amazon UK link)

I had never heard of the film ‘Mona Lisa Smile’. But when I saw it - at 50 cents - in a church sale, I decided to buy it. Julia Roberts is usually good value and the story sounded interesting. We watched it last night, and thought it a very good film, with plenty to think about.

The film is set in the 1950s. Roberts plays the main character, a young woman called Katherine Watson. We meet her when she is about to take up a post as lecturer in History of Art at a very conservative all-girls American university. She’s a little nervous, but this has been her dream for a long time - partly because she hopes to introduce some new ideas to the students.

There are quite a number of characters, but the most important students soon emerge with their different personalities. Betty, who is soon to be married, is very condescending. Her parents are wealthy, and care for appearances above everything else. Her friend Joan would quite like to study law, but is more interested in getting married. And in those days having a career was not compatible with marriage, in most cases.

Then there’s Giselle, who is somewhat promiscuous but also very kind-hearted, and there’s Connie who’s rather insecure. These four girls are some of the first to answer questions in Katherine’s first lecture, and they share an apartment. Katherine lives in a house with the elocution and poise lecturer, Nancy, who seems to spend her spare time in front of the television.

It’s an interesting setup. Katherine is at first treated with scorn by the students, who have read all their course text books and know all the ‘answers’. It appears at first that there is nothing left to teach. So Katherine introduces some new ideas - modern art, and questions where the girls have to think for themselves, and decide what it is that makes something ‘art’.

Unfortunately, in doing this she comes up against the authorities, who want her to stick to the syllabus - after all, the girls are just biding their time until they can get married….

Julia Roberts is great as Katherine. She’s her usual self, looking very young, as this film was made in 2003. It’s never really possible to forget who she is as an actress, but it doesn’t much matter as she fits very well in this role. The younger woman who play the various students are good too, albeit rather caricatured.

It all feels very old-fashioned, which isn’t surprising as it’s set seventy years ago. Some of the customs of the university seem extremely strict and sexist; perhaps US colleges really were like that in the 1950s. I gather there were some ‘goofs’ and inconsistencies, but they don’t deter from the story,, which is, in essence about someone trying to make a difference, only to realise that perhaps not everyone wants to be changed.

Rated 12A in the UK, PG-13 in the US. There isn’t anything explicit, although there are lots of innuendoes and implications. There’s some bad language, but not an excessive amount, and no violence or gore. However I can’t imagine that this film would be of any interest to children anyway.

Review copyright 2020 Sue's DVD Reviews

A Midsummer Night's Dream (1999)

(Amazon UK link)

We have watched one or two films based on Shakespeare plays in the past and liked them very much. So when I saw the 1999 film version of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ at a church sale, it was an easy decision to buy it. We noticed a few well-known actors and actresses listed, and finally watched it yesterday evening.

Rather than being set in the 15th and 16th centuries, the film is set at the start of the 19th century, in Italy. So the clothes and some of the settings are rather more modern than would be expected, in particular several bicycles. But the language is Shakespeare’s.

I don’t know how true to the original play the script is as I haven't read it in many years. There may have been additions or deletions. But I certainly recognised many of the more famous speeches or dialogues, and it felt authentic. And as when seeing any Shakespeare production, the text became easy to understand after the first few minutes, once my ears were attuned to the style. The cast have a slightly odd mixture of English and American accents that jarred a little at first, but we gradually got used to that, too. 

The story is well-known. It's set both in the real world of autocratic fathers and unrequited love, and also the woodland full of fairies and sprites. Two young men, Demetrius (Christian Bale) and Lysander (Dominic West), are both in love with a girl called Hermia (Anna Freil). She loves one, but her father wants her to marry the other. And he threatens her with death or a convent if she fails to do his bidding.

Hermia’s friend Helena (Calista Flockhart) is in love with Demetrius, but he ignores her. And while I found Hermia quite believable, Helena’s histrionics felt exaggerated and fake at times. Perhaps it’s in keeping with a Shakespeare comedy - there’s certainly plenty of exaggeration later - but I didn’t much like Helena. Hermia and Lysander decide to run away into the forest, and their friends follow… only to be caught up in the fairyland world, in particular the mischievous sprite Puck, brilliantly played by Stanley Tucci. I had thought of Puck as a much younger lad, but could almost believe in this one.

Michelle Pfeiffer is excellent as the slighted queen of the fairies, Titania, who is bewitched to fall in love with the weaver known as Bottom (Kevin Kline). Rupert Everett makes a good Oberon too. The real and fairyland worlds weave together very well, fairies shown as mischievous, liking drink and dancing and various kinds of carousing.

The scenery, the magical effects and the acting and directing were all excellent, we thought, even if there was rather more implied intimacy than I had ever seen before in productions of this play. While there’s nothing untoward shown, there are several scenes where it’s obvious that couples are naked, and in at least one of them it is very clear what is about to happen.

Shakespeare’s plays are full of innuendoes and bawdiness, but it was rather more overt in this production than in the live theatre I have seen previously. So I was a little surprised that it was only rated PG, at least in the UK. The US has rated it PG-13 and I feel that would be more appropriate.

That apart, I would recommend this very highly, if you don’t mind a rather different style of production. It was very amusing in places, and we enjoyed it thoroughly.

Review copyright 2019 Sue's DVD Reviews

From Time to Time (Alex Etel, Maggie Smith)

(Amazon UK link)

The main character in this film is Tolly, a thirteen-year-old boy, played by Alex Etel. The story is set in 1944, at the end of World War II. Tolly’s father is ‘missing in action’, so his mother has gone to London to see if she can find out more information. The only place she can think of sending Tolly for the school holidays is to his grandmother, Mrs GreenKnowe (Maggie Smith).

Unfortunately there has been a rift in the family, so Tolly is a stranger both to his Granny, and to the house.

Mrs Greenknowe starts telling Tolly about previous inhabitants of the house. This is partly prompted by his interest in some of the portraits and other artefacts he spots. Her housekeeper and gardener also tell him snippets of history, about family members and also about a terrible fire that burned down an entire wing.

Then Tolly starts to see ghosts. At first terrified, he is reassured by his grandmother’s calm acknowledgement that the spirits of the former family members do appear - and then finds himself appearing to them. As he asks more questions, he is taken more often into the past ,where he gets caught up in racism, intolerance, and the unpleasantness of one of his ancestors as a young man.

This is actually a film for older children, an adaptation of a book called ‘The Chimneys of Green Knowe’. It is one of a series of books by Lucy M Boston based in the middle of the 20th century, featuring an old house with both current and past inhabitants.

I thought the film was cleverly done. With no preconceptions, and not having read the books, I was able to follow the story easily enough - which is not always a given for me. Tolly is a likeable boy, at first rather awkward and defensive, knowing that his grandmother did not approve of his parents’ marriage. Maggie Smith, of course, is brilliant. Gradually Tolly and his grandmother learn to respect and even love each other, and there are some positive themes about family ties and loyalty that shine through.

We watched this with an adult friend, and found it quite tense in places, moving in others. There are some moments of light humour too, particularly in the initial interactions between Tolly and his grandmother. Their slow acceptance of each other is done very well, as is the gradual unfolding of two stories alongside each other, both present and past.

There are, of course, plot holes from the time travel point of view. It would be difficult to avoid them. One such ‘problem’ is raised directly by Tolly, and cleverly answered by his grandmother in the sense of having to accept that something apparently illogical happened.  The ending of the film is perhaps a bit abrupt, and yet it works well without leaving too many questions open.

Apparently the setting and much of the story deviates quite sharply from the book, which naturally annoys those who are purists about such things. But this is explained in the one and only ‘Extra’ - a conversation with Julian Fellowes, who directed the film. He talks about wanting to make it for many years, and the way he had to make changes. These were based on the limitations of the media, and the need for images and drama that make a movie always somewhat different from a book.

All in all, we thought it well done and worth watching. The rating is PG in both the US and UK, which seems about right; some of the action is quite tense and even a little scary, and I doubt if it would be of much interest to anyone under the age of about ten or eleven.

Review copyright Sue's DVD Reviews