Comfort food

Meryl Streep shines as Julia Child in
Nora Ephron’s Julie & Julia

COOKBOOK QUEEN: Streep

by MARK SLUTSKY

As a man who loves food, and a man who loves movies, I have to say that I’ve been looking forward to Julie & Julia for some time—even willing to overlook the recent track record of writer/director Nora Ephron. I’m happy to say that Julie & Julia, largely on the strengths of its two female leads, delivers exactly what I was hoping for and managed to win me over despite its obvious and glaring problems. A movie doesn’t have to be perfect if it’s this likeable.

The movie boasts the dubious distinction of being the first film to be based on a blog and it’s also distinguished by being based on two separate books that tell two very different, if related, stories. Julie & Julia tells the story of both Julie Powell and Julia Child, two cooks and writers who never met. But without the latter, we’d never be hearing about the former.

See, in 2002, Julie Powell, then working for the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, started a blog called The Julie/Julia Project, which documented her efforts to cook each of the 524 recipes in Julia Child’s seminal Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year. Her project was an early blogosphere hit and was turned into a book.

Powell’s story, in Ephron’s film (where she’s played by Amy Adams), is interwoven with the tale of Child’s origins as a culinary icon. That section of the film, based on her book, My Life in France, tells a sort of “secret origins” story: Child (Meryl Streep) and husband Paul (Stanley Tucci), an American diplomat, move to France for work, and they are both immediately won over by the country and its rich culinary history. Looking for a way to spend her time, Child, already in her 40s, starts taking classes at the Cordon Bleu and discovers her life’s passion, then spends years trying to write a book to share it with American readers.

The stories are told in parallel, leaping back and forth in time between the two women on their journeys towards culinary happiness. Actually, “stories” might be a bit much—both plots are fairly skimpy on actual incident, and it shows in the way the film tries to elevate a minor squabble over the division of labour between Child and her partners, for instance, or Powell’s marital discord with her otherwise blandly saintly husband (Chris Messina) into major crises. (One near-marriage-destroying squabble between Powell and hubby seems parachuted in out of nowhere).

That would be Julie & Julia’s biggest problem. Luckily, it doesn’t really matter. This movie moves along on the strength of its characters and performances, and especially Meryl Streep’s. Both her and Adams are pretty loveable, but Streep pulls off the trickier feat, portraying someone whose public persona is so well-known while at the same time adding a whole new, personal dimension to the woman.

Her Child is an indefatigable optimist yes, and a woman deeply in love with her husband, but also someone who seems to be held in the joy of discovering her calling late in life, as if she was just on the verge of disappointment. As for Adams, she is as charming as ever, though she doesn’t have as strong a match as Streep does with Tucci (whose performance is understated and perfect).

For its weaknesses, Julie & Julia is a purely enjoyable film (and the food stuff is great too—you’ll want to make a bouef borguignon for your next dinner) and an unexpected return to form for Ephron, who seems perfectly paired with the subject matter.

JULIE & JULIA OPENS THIS
FRIDAY, AUG. 7