Mona Lisa Smile (2003) is a period drama set in 1953 about Katherine Watson, a progressive art-history professor from California who takes a job at the elite, conservative women’s college Wellesley and tries to push her students to imagine lives beyond the “marriage first, career never” script laid out for them. Her brightest students, Betty, Joan, Giselle, Connie arrive overprepared, able to recite the textbook but not to question the narrow futures the college and their families expect, so Kat