Early in the film, Julie & Julia, Julia Child (played with delicious enthusiasm by Meryl Streep) arrives in France where her husband, Paul (Stanley Tucci), has been posted with the U.S. State Department. They stop in Rouen for lunch in a lovely café, and the screen fills with a copper pan holding a golden sole meuniere sitting in a pool of beurre blanc. Julia swoons and so does the audience. Be warned: dine before you attend the movie otherwise even a huge tub of buttered popcorn will fail to satisfy.
By now everyone knows the story of Julie Powell (left) who wrote a blog about her year-long project cooking all 542 recipes in Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The movie shifts between Julia’s early life in France where she attends the famous Le Cordon Bleu cooking school and collaborates with two other women to write the cookbook, and Julie’s life in New York, where she comes home each day after her fulltime job to tackle another recipe and write about it on her blog.
On Tuesday evening, August 4, the Paley Center screened the film with introductions by Pat Mitchell, the center’s president, and Powell herself. Beforehand, the audience was able to enjoy original clips from The French Chef, Child’s PBS program where she introduced Americans to French cooking and made it seem accessible and fun. When one half of the “loose mass” she flips ends up on the counter, she calmly puts the thing back together and tells us, “Who’s going to see?” We loved it then and we love it now. The scene, quintessential Julia Child, makes it into the movie with Streep doing the flipping.
Child was a pioneer, a celebrity chef before the term was coined. Mitchell noted Child amassed an unprecedented forty years on television, following The French Chef with Julia Child & Company, In Julia’s Kitchen with Master Chefs, and others. (These television shows can be viewed in the Paley Center’s library). Child’s voice was unmistakable and many comedians attempted parodies, including Dan Ackroyd on Saturday Night Live, another clip that finds its way into the film.
Powell told the Paley Center audience that she was “depressed, hopeless, very sad,” and decided in the middle of the night that she would cook her way through Child’s book and write about it. (In the movie, she is shown working for the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. in the wake of 9/11, fielding calls from relatives of survivors). She thought the Julie/Julia Project, as she called it on her blog, would change her life—and it did. “This movie is about transformation,” she said. (Although one wonders whether it was the cooking alone that transformed Powell’s life or the subsequent book and film contracts).
Food and cooking do transform Julia’s life. When she casts about for something to do in France, Paul asks her: “What is it you really like to do?” Without pausing, she responds, “Eat.” “And you’re so good at it,” he says. “I am,” she laughs.
The film, written for the screen and directed by Nora Ephron, is promoted as being based on Powell’s blog and book, but the real meat of the movie is taken from Child’s own autobiography, My Life in France, written with Paul Prud’homme and published in 2006 after her death. While the Julie scenes are amusing and classic Ephron (Adams seems at times to be channeling Meg Ryan), Child’s story is far more interesting.
Julia was forty and a virgin when she married Paul and they never had children. Their love affair, beautifully detailed in the film, is one for the ages. Streep and Tucci, both superb, convey the affection between the couple, several times withdrawing to the bedroom in the middle of the day. “What if you had never fallen in love with me?” Julia asks Paul at one point. “But I did,” he responds. Beyond the physical attraction, their strong emotional bond is underscored again and again. Before women had careers, Paul is seen encouraging Julia to pursue her love of food, to teach, to write, and to do television. In the beginning, one finds it difficult to connect the affectionate, sensuous Julia (whether Streep or the real Julia), with the same woman sticking her hand in a chicken or dicing mounds of onions with a huge knife. But doesn’t it follow that someone passionate about food would be passionate about love and life in general?
Against the Julia-Paul love affair, the relationship between Julie and her husband, Eric, played by Chris Messina, suffers. The two come off as whining, urban yuppies, unwilling or unable to support each other. In real life, Powell’s follow-up book, Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession, in which she details “an insane, irresistible love affair,” with a close friend, has been delayed for release until December. Insiders speculate that producers for Julie & Julia feared the book’s publication would impact the film, making Julie seem less likable.
The film is likable and enjoyable. Streep’s performance (is there an accent she can’t do?), is sure to win her another Academy Award nomination. There are the beautiful scenes in post World War II France, and, of course, all the sumptuous food. How many “servantless American cooks” will take Child’s cookbook off the shelf and vow, if not to attempt all 542 recipes, at least to try something. We have to thank Powell for helping us to renew our relationship with Julia Child.
Powell didn’t stay after the Paley Center screening to answer questions about her blog, her book, the film, or the aftermath. We could imagine, however, Powell taking to heart Julia’s often quoted advice: “Never apologize, no excuses.”
The post <i>Julie & Julia:</i> A Feast for the Eyes appeared first on Woman Around Town.
