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.

Bon Appétit!

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

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 8th, 2009 at 2:20 pm and is filed under critiques, cucina. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.