Mona Lisa Smile (2003). Written by Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal. Directed by Mike Newell. Starring Julia Roberts. A Revolution Studios and Columbia Pictures Film. Rated PG-13.

If you're looking for a good feminist flick, don't believe the media hype about Mona Lisa Smile, which is playing in first-run cinemas to packed crowds. The best that we can say about Mona Lisa Smile is that it's a good 50s period piece - if you dug the 50s. But what woman did? And herein lies the problem…

Mona Lisa Smile is being given rave reviews and called everything from 'feminist' to 'radfem,' 'subversive maybe,' 'communist never,' and 'pre-feminist,' - even in Toronto's alternative entertainment magazines like Eye Weekly. But after sitting through two hours of Julia Roberts and the teenaged lives of insanely rich, white, upper-middle class school girls, we have to admit we were puzzled. Neither the plot, nor the content, nor any parts of the film's dialogue directly addressed feminism or delved at all into the complexities or systemic barriers to women's liberation. The reviewers' claims that the film is feminist are absurd; in fact, not only is the film not feminist, it depicts women as subordinates and then idealizes "how far women have come."

But what did we expect, from a Hollywood film starring Julia Roberts, the highest paid female actor in Hollywood? The storyline takes place during the 1950s and follows Roberts, who plays Katherine Watson, a teacher from California who is hired at a bourgeois all-women's school called Wellesley College. As Watson tries to teach her students how to be critical about art history, she quickly realizes the conservative nature of the school and that even the girls themselves are more interested in getting married and having babies than choosing a career. The film hints at important issues such as the oppression of women regardless of class or race, women's right to define themselves outside of heterosexual social norms, changing societal views around divorce, women's role in the workforce and a questioning of women's obligations to their husbands and families. But in the end, the film never delivered anything that could be called feminist. Instead, Watson gives up without much of a fight at all and the movie ends with her leaving the college. So where's the kick-ass feminism in that?

For us, it was really irritating that Watson was such a passive heroine and yet the film is hailed as being feminist in all of the reviews. When the school's lesbian nurse gets fired for giving out birth control, Watson doesn't fight for her and she doesn't fight for herself. And although Watson tries to teach the girls to explore their full potential, her interventions only have the effect of leaving each girl struggling with her own identity in isolation. This runs completely contrary to the Feminist Movement's motto that the "personal is political" and sisterhood is global. The success of the Feminist Movement had everything to do with fighting battles on many fronts to challenge the systemic barriers that oppressed women at that time and that still do today.

What needs to be changed in order to address women's oppression is not addressed by the film reviewers, or the film. This oversight is particularly disappointing, as it feeds into the perceptions of many young (particularly white, middle-class) women today who look at feminism as a war that's already been fought and won. Just like one young girl in the movie, having the "choice" of a career or a family is enough. We can all go home happy in the knowledge that women are no longer oppressed. And no, we're not making this up. People think that. People like Julia Roberts. In an interview with Glamour magazine, Roberts actually said that, "women have come so far, we can wear pants." How liberating.

No, Mona Lisa Smile is not a feminist film and with every review that says it is, the magnitude of our work as socialist feminist activists becomes more evident. How can we, in 2004, be celebrating the fact that we can wear pants? Hasn't anyone read the multitude of studies that showed that during the 1990s, women and particularly "women of colour" had less income than previous years? Even though we live in a society that allows and encourages women to work outside the home, this has not ended women's oppression. In addition to joining the labour market, women continue to be mainly responsible for child rearing and the domestic realm. Furthermore, massive government cuts to daycare, social assistance, and supportive housing have added further burdens on the backs of women. And when you look at the position of women of colour, immigrant and refugee women, and women globally, the inequities are even more striking. Around the world, women of colour continue to work long hours in low-wage, unsafe conditions far from their families. Changes to immigration legislation mean it is even more difficult for these women to immigrate to find adequate work and access to basic needs.

For feminists, the battle is far from over. So where does that leave you, Julia Roberts?

Domenica Dileo and Dana Milne are socialist feminists and members of the New Socialist Group