Year:
2000
Studio: The Bubble Factory
Movie:
3/5
DVD: 0/5
Playing Mona Lisa is the story of a young woman who learns
self-confidence in both her romantic life and her professional life.
Claire Goldstein (Alicia Witt) is a prodigy at the piano (much like
Witt herself) who has just graduated from the I-think-fictitious San
Francisco Music Academy or something like that. Oh, the movie is set in
San Francisco and suburbs which I liked.
Anyway, Claire has a boyfriend, Jeremy (Zachary Kranzler), who also
graduated from the academy. Both of them are disappointed that they
didn't make the Tchaikovsky competition. During a drunken night
drowning their sorrows Jeremy proposes to Claire.
She is not sure what to do. Consulting her best friend Sabrina (Brooke
Langton), Claire decides that she will accept and happily skips off to
tell Jeremy. Unfortunately Jeremy doesn't remember anything since he
was drunk and not only that, he wants to break up.
This drives Claire into a deep funk. Neither her mentor and former
teacher, Bennet (Harvey Fierstein), nor her family composed of mom
(Marlo Thomas), dad (Elliot Gould), and older sister Jenine (Molly
Hagan) who is getting married to Barry (Joe Mazza), nor her friends
Sabrina and Arthur (Johnny Galecki) help. Consequently she misses a
couple of interviews to a pianist job.
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And then she
meets Eddie (Ivan Sergei). Good looking, smooth talking, fun to be
around. He sweeps Claire off her feat but later on we find out he's a
dark secret of his own. Claire is once again happy and getting on with
her life but Jeremy still bugs her and she uses that as an excuse to
fail professionally.
Eventually Claire has to realize that she needs to be an independent
woman. One who takes charge in relationships and who is not afraid to
fail succeed professionally. And she does at the end. Though we don't
see her get the job, we see her finally face the audition and get up on
stage, and that's a major victory for her.
I liked this movie. It's an independent film so it's rather low key
with not much music and sound. Alicia Witt is incredibly smart and
beautiful and I've said before that I'm attracted to her, which is one
reason I like this movie. It has some nice subplots: Sabrina with her
mysterious lover, the smart Arthur and his equally smart cheerleader
(Raiderette) girlfriend, mom and dad going through their respective
life crises. Overall it's a nice movie.
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