Delicious film of butter, blogging and bold women

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FILM: JULIE & JULIA
REVIEWED BY LISA DAVIS

POSTWAR Paris meets post-September 11 New York in Nora Ephron’s latest feel-good offering, Julie & Julia.

Tagged as being “based on two true stories”, it is based on Julia Child’s memoir, My Life in France, which documented her experience of France in the 1940s and ’50s, and Julie Powell’s 2002 blog-turned-novel, Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen.

The IMDb website lists the film as the first motion picture based on a blog.

Child is played by Meryl Streep, who — not surprisingly -— steals the show. Streep warbles and rocks her way through the role without ever turning it into a caricature and that cannot have been easy.

The adorably vulnerable Amy Adams plays Powell, a dissatisfied administrative worker living in Queens after the September 11 attacks, who longs to escape her cubicle and pursue her passion for writing.

She finds relief and escape from her soul-destroying job through cooking, and decides to work her way through Child’s classic cooking tome, Mastering The Art of French Cooking, in one year, and blog the whole experience.

Originally published in two volumes, Child co-wrote the book with French collaborators Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle.

Ephron -— who is apparently not-too-shabby in the kitchen herself -— wrote, directed and produced the film, which draws neat parallels between the two women’s lives, making it very easy to watch, even though the film is essentially two stories spliced into each other.

Ephron’s Jewish love of food and eating is evident throughout the film, just as it has been in her previous films, including When Harry Met Sally.

Ephron’s movies are quite often a homage to the city of New York as much as anything else, and one would expect Julie & Julia to be the same. Yet the city that steals the show here is a slightly run-down, battle-scarred Paris, full of charm and a slightly soiled beauty, not to mention gourmet offerings: a city that someone like Child would fall in love with.

Though France was just divinely imagined, and the food did indeed look mouth-watering (if slightly butter-soaked), what particularly stood out to me was the way that real relationships were portrayed in the film, and with such respect: relationships between women who were looking for something, and the supportive husbands who loved them, relationships between siblings and between female friends.

These are not idealised, or played for gags, but portrayed affectionately in all their gritty glory. The only exception to this is Powell’s relationship with her mother, who routinely destroys her daughter’s self-esteem in a cliched sort of way -— but this couldn’t have taken up more than 40 seconds of screen time, so it’s easy to ignore.

While this is primarily a film about Julie and Julia -— not to mention food —- it is also a film about people. And a thoroughly entertaining and funny one at that.

This is a movie that you could take your mum to see without blushing, but you’d better schedule time to go eat something later because you’ll be hungry.

Julie & Julia opens is currently screening in cinemas.