Mona Lisa Smile is a 2003 film that was produced by Revolution Studios and Columbia Pictures, directed by Mike Newell and written by Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal and starred Julia Roberts and Maggie Gyllenhaal, Kirsten Dunst and Julia Stiles. The title is a reference to the Mona Lisa, a famous painting by Leonardo da Vinci, and the song of the same name, sung by Nat King Cole and played in the movie itself.

Box office performance:
Costs (approximate):
Production: $65,000,000
Marketing: $25,000,000
Income:
United States: $63,860,942
Worldwide (excluding U.S.): $76,972,150
Profit: $51,000,000 (approx.)

Mona Lisa Smile tells the story of a feminist teacher ("Katherine Watson"), who, after graduating from the fictional "Oakland State" University (thought to be a fictionalized University of California, Berkeley), leaves her boyfriend behind in Los Angeles, California in 1953, to teach at Wellesley College, a women's college in the Eastern coast of the United States. The movie portrays Wellesley in the 1950s as being conservative.

Watson tries to inspire her students into believing in themselves, study to become career professionals and improve their economic futures. She utilizes her art teachings as a vehicle to show young women her opinion: that the stereotype of women being born to become housewives and mothers was wrong, and women could do more things in life than just the roles of wives and mothers. In one scene of the movie, she shows her students four newspaper ads, and asks them to question what the future will think of the idea that women are born into the roles of wives and mothers.

Watson's ideas and ways of teaching were met with dislike by part of the school's directors, conservative women who believed firmly that Watson should not use her class to express her points of views or befriend students, and stick only to teaching art. Watson was warned that she could be fired if she continued acting the way she did around students.

Undaunted, Watson became stronger in her speeches about feminism and the future of women. She was a firm believer that the outlook of women in society needed to be changed if women were to achieve better futures, and that she needed to instill a spirit of change among her students.

Watson chooses to leave after the one year, but, as she was leaving the campus for the last time, her students ran after her car, to show her affection and thank her for her lessons. Many people have noticed the film's similarity to The Dead Poets Society even going so far as to refer to it as "the feminist Dead Poets Society" or "Dead Poets Society with girls." It was released on VHS and DVD use on July of 2004.

In a message to Wellesley alumnae concerning the film, Wellesley College president Diana Chapman Walsh expressed some degree of regret concerning the distressed reactions of some Wellesley alumnae to the film. Many alumnae who attended Wellesley during the 1950s felt that the film's portrayal of Wellesley as a stodgy, conservative college was inaccurate.