Julie & Julia tells two parallel real-life stories. The first is of the larger-than-life US chef Julia Child (Meryl Streep), who is bored just being the wife of an American diplomat in France in the 1950s and so decides to enrol in cookery school, eventually sharing her love of food with the US masses through her book Mastering The Art Of French Cooking, which became a seminal work and revolutionised how Americans related to what they could do in the kitchen.
The other story brings things up to date, or at least to 2002, where Julie Powell (Amy Adams) is leading a dead-end civil-servant life where she feels she isn’t living up to her promise. In a slightly eccentric move she decides to start ‘The Julie/Julia Project’, where she plans to work her way through all 564 recipes in Child’s famous book in a year, blogging about her experiences along the way.
It all makes for a very pleasant, lightweight confection, which never seems entirely sure why it exists, but wants to ensure you have a nice time watching it anyway. As a non-American viewer, it probably doesn’t help that Julia Child doesn’t have the legendary status over here that she enjoys in the US. The film sort of presumes you already know about her and the importance of her book, but of course, most of us Brits don’t. It’s like if we made a movie about Delia Smith, and presumed Americans would just accept her national treasure status even though they’ve never heard of her.
However this doesn’t matter too much, although it does mean the film probably won’t mean as much to us as it does the Yanks. It is all quite enjoyable though, with the film realising the Julia Child story is the more interesting one and therefore deserving of more screen time (and much nicer art direction of a vaguely fantasy 50s Paris), while drawing parallels between the lives of the two women, both of whom strive for something more, are supported by husbands who seem only mildly irked at their spouses’ eccentricities (Julia’s husband Paul (Stanley Tucci) is supportive almost to a fault, as apparently he was in real life), with their passions resulting in publishing success.
The film wisely never pushes the parallels too strongly, perhaps realising that if it tried to tie the two together too tightly it would come across a rather contrived and facile, however the back and forth does help give interest to two stories that on their own might seem lacking in incident.
It’s a movie that shouldn’t really work, and it’s difficult to imagine it being as watchable in any other hands. Nora Ephron (Sleepless In Seattle) is a self-assured and talented writer/director, and thankfully has managed to create one of the few female driven movies of recent years that admits women are interested in things other than shoes and finding a man. While showing they like cooking might seem a little old-fashioned, in other ways it’s a much better depiction of women looking for a full-bodied life of their own than most recent female-skewing films have managed, even if there’s relatively little drama.
Amy Adams is charming in a tough role, which in others hands could have made Julie seem rather self-obsessed and annoying. However this is one of Adam’s greatest talents, to make virtually any character seem likable, which she’s shown before in films like Junebug and Enchanted (just imagine how much you’d have wanted to punch that fairytale princess if she didn’t possess Adam’s sweet innocence).
Meryl Streep on the other hand is awful. Actually no she isn’t. I just wanted to write those words to see if the world collapsed, as I don’t think anyone’s ever said them before. One day she’s going to be truly dreadful in something, but so far she never has been. Her worst days have been when she was quite good in the likes of Death Becomes Her and She-Devil, while her 15 Oscar nominations speak for themselves. It’s quite sickening actually.
While I can’t say how close Streep gets to the real Julia, apparently it’s a spot-on, and whether it is or not, it’s a joy to watch. In fact it’s the joie de vivre that Streep brings to the role of the six foot, two inch Child that helps stop the entire movie from seeming slightly pointless and ensures you want to keep watching.
If I’m being honest there isn’t really that much to Julie & Julia. It’s all very nice and probably more enjoyable than it should be, particularly considering neither tale is probably movie worthy on their own, and the parallels are relatively light. But it works. Julie & Julia may be more of an Extra Value Meal than a full-on gourmet dinner, but sometimes a bit of fast food just about hits the spot.
Overall Verdict: A light, fluffy soufflé that may leave you feeling like you could do with another course, but which is tasty enough nevertheless.
Reviewer: Phil Caine
