Lovely and Amazing Film Review

Lovely and Amazing, an indie film by Nicole Holofcner, is a story about 4 women, varying in ages, and there struggles to "better" themselves and become members of the world around them. It just so happens that these 4 women are all related. The mother, Jane, and her three daughters, Michelle, Elizabeth, and Annie, all have varying levels of body image issues that are dealt with in very different ways over the course of the film.

Annie, the youngest and only adopted daughter in the family, is African American, whereas the rest of her family is Caucasian. The difference in their races isn't really dealt with in this film, but it can be assumed that the issue will come up later on in her life. The problem faced in the film is that Annie is overweight for a young girl and she sometimes binge eats cookies. In the movie she said that she didn't think the cookies were unhealthy, so she ate them. She gets in trouble for eating like that but it doesn't deter her hunger. At the end of the movie, there is a scene where she buys a large amount of food at a McDonald's, but claims that she isn't going to eat it all. She also convinces her Big Sister to use a relaxer to straighten her hair, so she could look more like her white family.

Elizabeth, the daughter who seems the most normal, deals with her body image the most because she is an actress trying to break into the business and that business is very harsh and critical. On top of that, she struggles with being the most responsible sister, as her mother asks her to take care of Annie, if anything were to happen to her. Elizabeth's lack of self-esteem culminates when she starts an affair with an actor, with whom she couldn't be cast as a love interest. She then asks this man to tell her all the things that are wrong with her body and he doesn't hold back (after an initial hesitation). It is obvious to the viewer that his critique of her body only further decreased her self-esteem level.

Michelle, the eldest daughter, is married and has a daughter. She doesn't have a job and sits home and watches cartoons all day, which infuriates her husband who works all day. At first, to make money, she creates these tiny chairs, which she hopes she can sell, but that doesn't pan out. She then gets a job at a one-hour photo place and to boost her self-esteem, she starts an affair with a 17 year old boy. I don't think the affair went further than flirting and kissing, but ultimately they get caught by his mom and she gets arrested for statutory rape. Needless to say, her marriage ended subsequently.

Finally there is the mother Jane, who I think unintentionally fostered all of these problems in her children. She is a single and wealthy woman, who never found true love and that is what she is after. Jane thinks that by having liposuction, she will become more desirable and find love. She even develops a crush on her surgeon, which doesn't work out, because he is happily married.

Overall, I think this was a good movie with a good message that is hidden in all the ways that women limit themselves and worry constantly about how they appear to others. Body image issues plague women starting from a very early age and don't ever really stop. These women were dealing with so many body image issues that they started to lose sight of who they were as people and as a family. Even though the ending was abrupt and unexpected, I hope that these women found that love and acceptance starts from within and there's no better place to find that love than with a family.

Mona Lisa Smile Film Review

Mona Lisa Smile is a film based in the 1950's at Wellsley College, a institution for higher learning for women in that time period. The only difference between the women today (mostly) and the women, in this movie, is that they were in it solely for their MRS degrees. More often than not, the young ladies who attended Wellsley College in this movie would end up married and on their way to having children before they even got close to graduation. Women in this time period were only good for one thing and that was to become someone's wife and someone else's mother. No one was concerned with the academic development of these women. It is my personal belief that these women were enrolled in college just because they had the money from their parents backing them and so they could hold good dinner conversation with their husband's bosses and bosses' wives. The film follows the story of five different women and how their paths at this college changed each other's lives. Katherine Watson (played by movie vet Julia Roberts) was a very liberal and "subversive" instructor from California who couldn't understand why a woman would want to limit herself to just being known as someone's wife. While most of the girls found her interesting, there was one girl who opposed her every step of the way. Betty Warren, portrayed by Kirsten Dunst, was one of the women that believed that she was completely justified in her choices to become engaged and later marry someone, putting her betrothed above her education, by skipping classes and fighting Katherine Watson's teachings. After seeing how Wellsley was teaching these girl's to act, Professor Watson used her lectures to show the girls that there were other methods out there and they did indeed have choices outside of becoming someone's (in)significant other.

The overall theme of this movie had to do with change. But the change was different for each of the main characters. In Joan Brandwyn's case (Julia Stiles), she was a more progressive student, who wanted the best of both worlds. She wanted the education (going to law school) and she wanted the husband and children. In the end, she realized that although she wanted both, she wasn't willing to sacrifice her future family by being selfish. While I don't exactly understand her choice, I admire her for being so selfless. In Giselle Levy's situation (Maggie Gyllenhaal), she was the promiscuous student that everyone talked about and who had a ongoing affair with one of her professors. She was confident in her sexuality and even used taboo birth control pills openly. I think that by the end of her experience with Katherine Watson, she realized that she was better than random sexual relationships with men that didn't care about her. For Connie Baker (Ginnifer Goodwin), she struggled with body and confidence issues and her situation wasn't helped by some of her friends and her relationship with men. By the end of the movie, she transformed into a much more confident woman who didn't need the approval of her friends or any man to make her happy, although she got the guy at the end. Betty Warren is a very difficult case. She was influenced by her mother from a young age to act a certain way, to look a certain way, and she took that to a very extreme level. She was constanly angry and trying to smash the happiness of others because deep down she wasn't happy with herself. I think the kicker was that when her husband cheated on her, publicly, her mother told her to suck it up and deal with it like a married woman, basically ignoring his indiscretions. Ultimately she chose her happiness over keeping up appearances and that all had to do with one woman. Katherine Watson, from the very start, came in with a mind to change the mind's of those women right away without taking into account their feelings at all. She wanted to change their minds about becoming housewives. She wanted them to see that there was a way to get both, or if they wanted just to have an education, it was okay to do that too. At the end, she realized that not only couldn't she change those women, if they were set in their ways, but she couldn't change her own mind about her beliefs, and so she departed from Wellsley.

I love the movie Mona Lisa Smile. It is just such an uplifting movie and gives a good message and lesson about the choices that women are forced to make even to this day. It was interesting to watch from an academic perspective and really analyze the women and their issues, and how it affected their body images.