Movie: Julie & Julia 2009

We all know how this ends, Julia Child’s Mas­ter­ing of Art of French Cook­ing is pub­lished and becomes a world wide suc­cess. It’s in prac­ti­cally every chef’s kitchen library, whether the book has been cracked open or not. It is there. After you see this movie, you’ll  prob­a­bly be inspired to crack it open and make the Boeuf Bour­guignon a La Julia Child. I hope that didn’t spoil any­thing for you.

So, we know what hap­pens at the end of the story, which is really the begin­ning of Julia’s suc­cess, at what the French call “a cer­tain age”..meaning old and over 40. If you have read My Life In France based on let­ters and memen­tos saved and sent home by Paul and Julia Child, you may won­der why this wasn’t made into a movie on it’s own. Or maybe not. If it’d been made into a movie, it would prob­a­bly not have been any­more than a docu­d­rama that had a foodie based cult-following. It needed a spin and a sexy way of bring­ing it to the masses for box office bonanza. Enter Meryl Streep. Fol­lowed by Julie Powell.

Let’s start with the lesser known, Julie Pow­ell. I will address her as I know her from the movie, I won’t go into the foodie-blogger– back­lash she has received or her actual Julie & Julia Blog itself (I never read it), you can look into that your­self. Just Google Julie Pow­ell Back­lash.

Julie Pow­ell is a nov­el­ist that never fin­ished her novel, has a seem­ingly adorable and ador­ing hus­band and  some sort of Post 9/11 sup­port job in a cubi­cle in Lower Man­hat­tan. She’s not happy about her cur­rent work sit­u­a­tion, friends and her­self. Aside from her mar­riage, she feels lost and out of sorts. Who doesn’t really. She men­tions to her hus­band that one of her friends has started a blog (weblog) and maybe she should start one too. She is a writer after all! They hit upon the sub­ject of cook­ing, Julia Child, Julia’s book… and voilá!, the Julie & Julia Project Blog: 365 Recipes in 524 Days was launched.

For one year, Julie made and blogged about every recipe. It seems nor­mal now, but a few short years ago, blog­ging wasn’t as ubiq­ui­tous. Shar­ing every wak­ing thought that enters one’s head wasn’t as nor­mal then as Twit­ter has made it seem today. To top that, there were actu­ally peo­ple that read the­ses things, who knew?

Before we talk more about the movie, ahem, enter Meryl Streep. What bet­ter per­son to por­tray this larger than life (lit­er­ally, Julia was 6’2″), ebul­lient, joy­ful Amer­i­can and not seem like a  SNL skit?

Meryl Streep does an amaz­ing job of inhab­it­ing the Julia char­ac­ter. Her voice and man­ner­isms seems over-the-top until you see actual Julia footage and real­ize how spot– on Meryl’s por­trayal actu­ally is. Hair and Makeup are the main rea­sons. I read in Van­ity Fair Mag­a­zine that Meryl has her own Hair and Make-Up artist, J. Roy Hel­land, that she works with on her films. Hel­land changes Meryl’s eye­brows in almost every role. I guess if the eyes are the win­dows to the soul ‚the eye­brows are the window-dressing. It is a trick to change and shift the shape and look of some­ones face.

Also, an inter­est­ing point, the makeup union rules state that actresses have sep­a­rate hair and makeup artists on a film. Some­how, Meryl and Hel­land worked out an exemp­tion decades ago.

Back to the movie, Julia is feel­ing  as if she needs “some­thing to do” in France, as the wife of a U.S. For­eign Ser­vice Offi­cer, Paul Child, she doesn’t want to be a Parisian house­wife — is there such a thing? It’s men­tioned briefly, that Paul is actu­ally an artist and served as designer of war rooms for British and Amer­i­can Generals.

Over their first lunch as new inhab­i­tants of Paris, Julia falls in love with French cui­sine — a life chang­ing lunch — she calls it. Later, dur­ing another lunch, Julia laments her dis­con­tent with just doing noth­ing. She tries a few dif­fer­ent things until she hits upon attend­ing cook­ing school, because she loves to eat! She enrolls in Le Cor­don Bleu.

So, the premise of the movie is based on the “par­al­lels” of Julie and Julia’s lives.

Let’s see, a woman a bit dis­con­tent with the status-quo, hap­pily mar­ried, turns to food. That describes a lot of peo­ple. The twist is the Julie & Julia blog. This ele­ment trans­ports Julia’s story to mod­ern day by inter­splic­ing  Julie’s day to day posts with Julia’s life in  lead­ing up to and writ­ing  Mas­ter­ing The  Art Of French Cooking.

The scenes of retro Paris are won­der­ful. The lifestyle of the Childs was def­i­nitely not work­ing class. The apart­ment they lived in and par­i­ties they attended were ultra chic and glam. Not some­thing you really asso­ciate Julia Childs with. At the same time, you see Julie’s world of a less than glam­orous Queens neigh­bor­hood, sub­way rides, cramped apart­ment and cubi­cle life.

I did enjoy both sto­ries and some­times for­got there was a sec­ond story line until there was tran­si­tion to the alter­nate sto­ry­line. This applied to both sides. At a cer­tain point though, I began to tire of  the mod­ern Julie’s sto­ry­line. Maybe because it is closer to my expe­ri­ences, dra­mas and melt­downs. I don’t know if it was the actual Julie or Amy Adams’ por­trayal. I find her kind of annoy­ing after a while.

In con­trast, I wanted Julia’s sto­ry­line to go on. There’s a lot to the back story that is sub­tly por­trayed, Julia want­ing chil­dren, McCarthy­ism and fam­ily relationships.

The under­ly­ing ques­tion of the movie, that we know hap­pened or there wouldn’t have been a movie, is the suc­cess of Julie’s blog and her thrust into the big time. Obvi­ously this does come, but, after the emo­tions and kind of whiny hys­ter­ics that lead up to and fol­low it, you don’t really get that excited. Nor is it really satisfying.

After see­ing Julia and her co– author, write, edit and TYPE ( on mul­ti­ple lay­ers of onion-skin paper and car­bon paper) the cook­book for EIGHT — TEN years, mail pack­ages back and forth, try to get an edi­tor and then wait­ing, wait­ing, wait­ing. It’s hard to get that excited over Julie’s “tri­umph” of get­ting a blog she wrote over the period of a year, in sim­ple daily posts, that was auto-published online, based on another person’s work and then hav­ing received numer­ous offers for book rights fol­low­ing a NY Times feature.

Um, no. Just really an eye-roll from me. But the world is full of lucky sto­ries like that. It won’t hap­pen again until it does.

The upswing is, I really enjoyed the movie. It wasn’t that dra­matic, pretty well-acted, upbeat, happy and enjoy­able. I don’t know if Meryl will get an Oscar nom­i­na­tion, but it’s still worth seeing.

Bön Appétit!

P.S. Let me know how your Boeuf Bour­guignon a La Julia Child turns out.