Can anyone explain to me the title's meaning?

Well the art thing is present in this movie. Julia Roberts plays an art history professor. The students who attend their classes explore art pre 1950s. Also they use the song Mona Lisa.

In the mean time one of the main characters Betty is putting up apperances in her life. She comes across in class and with her peers as someone who is snobby because her mother is on the allumni committee and has an attitude because she is married to another fellow who is wealthy.

While behind this facade of snobbery is a little girl who is forced into a marriage that is not of love. Her mother likes to domniate her and as said her loveless marriage has her husband travelling around and having affairs.

In answer to your question the title is best explained during the library scene.

Betty has told her mother she wants a divorce. Her mother finds her in the library and says she has spoken to Betty's mother-in-law and it was agreed by both mothers that the marriage should be tried for a year. Like it was a business transaction. It was all keeping apparences.

Betty is looking at Mona Lisa ans she responds:


Betty Warren: [ironically] Look at this, mother. She's smiling. Is she happy?
Mrs. Warren: The important thing is not to tell anyone.
Betty Warren: She looks happy, so what does it matter?

I dunno, but a guy in a night club lipsynch the Nat King Cole song. Terrible!

Not specifically. But it is a great title. I've been pondering about song lyrics. I seem to think that "Mona Lisa smile' is part of a song. That precise line doesn't occur in the Nat King Cole standard. And it's not in Seal's cover of the same song. So where have I heard the line "Mona Lisa smile" from a song before this film was made?

Of course the Julia Robert's character was a fan of Leonardo Da Vinci paintings. The artist who painted the Mona Lisa with the enigmatic smile. Great title for a film anyway.

Exactly.
It refers to the *smiles* we see on all the women's faces here.
Nobody knows if any of them are truly happy or just putting on a game face...a "Mona Lisa Smile".



I'd say this cloud is Cumulo Nimbus.
Didn't he discover America?
Penfold, shush.

They were looking at a picture of Mona Lisa and wondering if the smile meant she was happy or smiling because she was supposed to. A metaphor for the theme of the movie. M
Her smile was always called enigmatic.

Inside every cynical person is a disappointed idealist.