Julie & Julia (2009)

The expectation: Oh, I wanted this to be very very good. I knew it would be funny and cute- but I longed for it also to be smart and informative- creative and challenging. I just finished reading Julia Child's memoir "My Life in France" not one month ago, so I knew way too much about her going into this movie and I tried to lower my expectations. Do I ever succeed in that? Apart from that, no one can question the immense talent of Meryl Streep, the striking presence of Amy Adams, or the comic genius of Stanley Tucci, but I had to temper my excitement when I learned that this film is a product of Nora Ephron- writer and director. Famous for stylish romantic comedies, Ephron is good a what she does, creating romance for the feel-good patron, making us all swoon with the fantasy of happily ever after (how different this is from my last post). While her films are still to be appreciated, I wanted more for Julia Child; I wanted the film to be not just fun and lighthearted, but precocious and revealing- like Julia was herself. We shouldn't just get to walk away from this one wanting to eat French food. We should want to cook it.

The result:
Oh, how I am constantly disappointed. As I could have guessed, Streep, Adams, and Tucci are fantastic in their roles and just watching them is worth going to see this film. But, as Ephron promises, the film is cute and funny, fluffy and easy- with powdered sugar on top- like a cake made from a box. Julie (Adam), bored with her life, challenges herself to cook through Julia Child's cookbook, "Mastering the Art of French Cooking", and write a blog about it. Juxtaposed with her journey is Julia Child herself- taking cooking courses, struggling to succeed, interacting with food and her husband, and generally causing trouble. Within their stories is a theme to finding self-confidence, facing and conquering obstacles, failing tremendously, and then of course succeeding wildly by the end. Ephron would want me to say that it is this self-confidence gained that allows for professional success- but this makes me incredibly suspect. Were these women not professionally successful, their personal journeys would not really be worth anything to the rest of us. The story is warm but not very interesting. There is no other connection between the two women apart from their struggle with cooking. And I think that Julia Child is exploited a little through this product. She never liked the idea of fame- she just wanted to share her love of French cooking and the scientific recipes she so laboriously worked to perfect. This film, by not challenging the viewer, by catering to the viewer's need to feel good, focuses only on Child's celebrity persona and exploits the nature of her nostalgic relationship to us all. As I left the theater, I dragged by head to the conversations around me about where to go for dinner, patrons searching for French cooking, needing something more from the film as it lingered. Ephron created the smell in the air but it is up to us to really find something to satiate the real hunger. I went home and cooked a coq au vin- purple chicken!

What to look out for:
Meryl Streep. What an amazing lady. She makes Julia Child alive again- and the personality I can only know through memoirs, cookbooks, and stories, is captured with such intensity and sharpness by Streep. Thank you.
The trailer. Excellent marketing. You can stop here if you want to. Watch it a few times.
PBS on Julia Child- watch her in action- but I warn you, the minor (careless) errors they make in the film will piss you off after you watch the originals. (How can you not know that Child always ended her shows at the carefully arranged table setting, not in the kitchen?!)
http://www.pbs.org/juliachild/

Flickr photo by Milica Sekulic's