 |
||||||||||||||||
The message that the movie seems to promote is a somewhat affectionate but censorious trip back to a fifties view of the world where the academic establishment (as represented by Wellesley) is not ready to look at modern art as a subject for serious study, and the only real goal for a Wellesley girl is to be engaged or married before graduation. Although the movie adapts history unfairly to achieve its agenda, the final messages are not as clear as one would expect. The primary mistakes are those of chronology. First of all, Wellesley College was itself quite progressive long before the 1950’s. (This reviewer entered Wellesley in 1968 as a major in art history. I have checked with several older alumnae who were there in the forties and fifties to see if there could have |
 |
been such a radical change in 15 years-they say no.) Although marriage and family were normal expectations even for a Wellesley graduate in 1954, it would not have been too surprising for a graduate to continue in law school, medical school, or go into professional work of some other kind. Picasso and modern art were certainly part of the curriculum, although not on the syllabus of Art 100 then or later, as modern art fell into a different course because there simply would have been too much material for one year. The Wellesley College community justly has objected to this incorrect portrayal of its own character in its alumnae magazine. Another anachronism is the character played by Julia Roberts. Her costuming, behavior and mode of speech are characteristic of the seventies rather then the 50’s. Her character seems to have dropped into the movie from twenty years into the future instead of merely from California. And, although she at times loses her temper and is self-assertive (in one scene she storms into a fellow professor’s class yelling “To hell with Wellesley”), she is unsure of herself personally, and her own desires. |
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
