Julie & Julia

‘Julie & Julia’ is writer/director Nora Ephron’s (‘When Harry Met Sally’) latest opus to all things charming about life. Ephron takes a joyously curious Julia Child, played in a pitch-perfect turn by Meryl Streep, as she enters the world of French cuisine, and lays her opposite a 21st century counterpart, Julie Powell (Amy Adams), a scrappy neophyte blogger from Queens who embarks on a self-improvement project to cook all of Child’s recipes from her iconic cookbook ‘Mastering the Art of French Cooking’.

Make no mistake about it: first and foremost the film is about food. You might wonder exactly what that means for the watchability of the film; surely there must be some romance, action and intrigue. Yes, there is: romantically married couples, repeated beatings (of eggs, hollandaise sauces, meringues), and talk of spies. And in Paris and New York City, too. However, again and again, the plot hangs on to food, and more specifically food as a means for some kind of personal purpose and salvation through writing about it.

Following her arrival in Paris, Streep’s Child, in her trademark sing-song hoot always teetering on the verge of laughter, complains that she needs something to do. Her endlessly supportive and dashingly talented husband, the sartorial and multi-faceted artist Paul Child (portrayed by a tailor-made Stanley Tucci) asks her what it is she really loves and Julia decisively replies, ‘Eat!’ His reaction is a look that says ‘then do it’. This symbiotic relationship between Julia and her husband is one of the more interesting aspects of the film; using details culled from her book written with her nephew Alex Prud’homme, ‘My Life in France’ Ephron succeeds in revealing the beautifully surprising reality that the Childs were madly in love and very active about it to boot.

Meanwhile, back in Queens, Julie is slowly withering away as a government secretary, downtrodden after an endless stream of days taking calls from families of 9/11 victims when she decides that she needs something bigger than herself to work towards. Her goofily encouraging editor husband suggests that as she is actually a writer and not a cubicle-jockey she start a blog.

And, as was mentioned before, it all comes down to food. Child throws herself into the Cordon Bleu’s most difficult course with the bursting excitement of a kid discovering the world anew. Fifty-something years into the future, blogger Julie sees her cooking project and resulting blog as proof that she can become more than her job and a failed writer who compares herself to her successful girlfriends.

Streep, as she always does, disappears into her role. This is a tricky thing to do when playing a familiar and much-beloved figure; it’s easy to get wrong and end up being an actor playing an actual person. However, one never gets the sense of watching ‘Meryl Streep as Julia Child’; one simply watches and believes it. In counterpoint to this already stacked deck, Adam’s character comes off as a tad whiny and immature, though both women are meant to be the same age.

Although the film seems to crawl at times, be reminded that this is not an action film: it is as has been said before, a film about food. Montages of terrines, boeuf bourguignon, roasted pigeons and the aspics of a bygone era are plentiful, if a bit flat. Nevertheless the Ephron’s pacing begs our attention, much like Child’s teachers and later Child herself beg other’s proper attention to cooking and the appreciation of even the most humble food.

‘Julie & Julia’ is now playing at the Shinjuku Musashinokan and other select theatres throughout Japan.