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Maybe it takes a woman of a certain age – or someone who lived with her when she was struggling to master the art of French cooking from Julia Child's monster cookbook – to fully appreciate Nora Ephron's movie “Julie & Julia."
Goodness knows most of the major critics did some carping about it, mostly about Julie Powell, the young woman played by Amy Adams, who decides to cook all the 500-plus recipes in a year and blog about it. They much preferred Meryl Streep's Julia, and they don't get it that while Julie was doing that monumental job she was also working in a stressful job in a lower Manhattan development company, taking phone calls from people unhappy about the destruction of the World Trade Center and the development plans. Of course she has meltdowns.
It's a delicious, sparkling movie, with Streep channeling Julia's insouciant humor and energy and Adams capturing the pressure chamber life of today's 30-somethings. Nice appearances by Linda Emond as Simone Beck and Helen Carey as Louisette Bertholle, Child's off-forgotten co-authors, and Frances Sternhagen as “Joy of Cooking” author Irma Rombauer.
There is a too-brief appearance as Julia's sister by Jane Lynch of numerous television appearances and the sly mockumentaries of Christopher Guest and his merry band of satirists. You'll hear Mary Kay Place as Julie's mom in Texas. StanleyTucci as Julia's husband? Many will take a new look at short men.
Julia, bless her, is mostly in Paris, the 40-year-old childless wife of a career diplomat; she needs “something to do.” No criticism of her for that. That's how so many lived in the '40s and' 50s, thrilled to see real butter again after the war, not to need ration books to buy food. And the real Julia must have been thrilled to give up her job with the government. (Spy? Maybe.)
Their stories alternate, with the Julia segments sunny and filled with the joy of learning to cook in Cordon Bleu classes, life with wonderfully supportive husband Paul. And living in Paris, Marseilles and Oslo. The Julie parts, in an apartment over a pizzeria in Queens, at the office, at lunch with friends doing their best to one-up unpublished novelist Julie, are much darker.
Until the New York Times comes to dinner and does a splashy story about Julie and her blog. In one day she gets 65 phone calls from publishers and agents suggesting a book, a movie, a TV show. And her mother, who finally has some respect for her effort.
Julia Child does not. In a phone call from a reporter at the Santa Barbara News-Press, where Julia is living in her last years, Julie learns that Julia has dismissed her work as “not serious.”
Remember that Julia spent 10 years working on the cookbook and struggling to get it published – and using a manual typewriter with carbon copies. (If you're too young to remember that, trust me – it's dreadful.) When she finally gets an offer from a publisher it includes an advance of $250. She cooked on live television shows with her mistakes right out there for everyone to see and mock. That's a lot of very hard work.
Julie zips off her blog on her computer and shortly has a following and some fame, along with all those offers of more. Sure, maybe there's a touch of sour grapes in Julia's response. Let's humor her.
If Julie Powell were an actual descendant of Julia Child, not just a virtual one, she'd be a great-granddaughter, and living in a totally different world, with its own special terrors along with its ease and toys. Great-grandmother Julia would probably understand perfectly.
It's at Lakeport Cinema through Sept. 10. Schedule at http://www.lakeportcinema.com/
Sophie Annan Jensen is a retired journalist. She lives in Lucerne.
