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Julie & Julia: c'est si bon
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Meryl Streep (AP Photo/Michael Spingler)
Without special effects, a hit soundtrack, or merchandising tie-ins, writer/director Nora Ephron's Julie & Julia emerged as one of the most appetizing cinematic successes between Labor Day and the 2009 holiday season. While the movie lacks hype or gimmickry, there's no shortage of star power, not with Meryl Streep providing yet another superb characterization destined to reap nominations for an Academy Award, Golden Globe, and every other accolade available to actresses. Streep's portrayal of celebrated cook and television personality Julia Child is her latest masterful creation, and although fine performances surround her in Julie & Julia, Streep steals the show in her usual fashion.
The dual storyline of Julie & Julia follows the true-life experience of struggling cook/writer Julie Powell during her attempt to prepare every recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 365 days while blogging about the challenge simultaneously from her Queens apartment above a pizzeria. Because the task is so demanding, Powell finds herself not only immersed in the cookbook, but also in the private life of Julia Child, to the point of obsession. Powell's gravitation toward her idol is hastened as she learns Child is a kindred spirit who also toiled at a government job while searching for her creative outlet as a chef in hopes of becoming a published culinary author. Amy Adams brings a natural charm to the earnest and often frustrated character of Powell, who yearns to escape her corporate cubicle via Child's landmark cookbook and the corresponding blog detailing her journey through its 524 recipes. Helping to keep his wife focused and grounded, Chris Messina (perhaps best known as Claire's Republican boyfriend in the last season of Six Feet Under) is equally convincing as Powell's ultra-patient, endlessly supportive husband who occasionally reminds his wife that he's not the saint she claims he is.
As Powell is shown preparing the sauces and main courses in Child's tome, her story is interspersed with flashbacks of the pre-celebrity Parisian life of Child and her husband, Paul (adeptly brought to life by Streep's The Devil Wears Prada co-star, Stanley Tucci). These parallel stories are seamlessly edited by Ephron, providing glimpses of the trials and tribulations of both titular women, which are remarkably similar despite the significant generation gap that separates them. Along with such directly comparative images as Child's manual chopping segued into Powell's use of an electric blender, the movie also contrasts the events that shape the era in which each woman lives, without allowing those socio-political influences to encroach too significantly on the movie's dominant element of food and its preparation. Julia Child endures the McCarthy era while Julie Powell assists victims of 9/11. Child attempts to coexist with a father who disapproves of both his daughters' marriages and is a conservative Republican admirer of McCarthy, while Powell must overcome insecurities exacerbated by her materialistic peers and the negative feedback from her hyper-critical mother. Ephron's visual dichotomy is especially engaging in one of the film's many humorous segments, when successive shots of each of the wives and husbands show them individually self-medicating their stomachs after a dinner that is as difficult to digest in the new millennium as it was in the 1960s.
Streep is no stranger to the double-plot picture, having played both roles in the similarly structured The French Lieutenant's Woman in 1981. That movie earned Streep one of her fifteen Academy Award nominations for supporting or lead actress, though, amazingly, she hasn't won in either category since her victories for Kramer vs. Kramer in 1979 and Sophie's Choice in 1982, respectively. Streep's performance as the easily lampooned Child is no less deserving of an award than any other character she has inhabited in her repertoire, so the inevitable sixteenth Oscar nod may also result in her third trophy. Streep's talent for accents is brought to the fore in Julie & Julia, thanks to her precise replication of the singularly high-pitched, drawn-out cadence of Julia Child. Yet unlike the numerous parodies of Child that have focused solely on the comical qualities of her distinctive speech (including Ephron's clever inclusion of Dan Aykroyd's Saturday Night Live spoof viewed by the Powells one evening on television), Streep embodies every nuance of Child to the degree that she makes the viewer understand why and how those chirping sounds were emitted from Child's vocal chords. Physically, Streep also manages to evoke powerful emotions without ever saying a word, particularly in the moments when she conveys Child's heartbreaking desire to have children via use of a melancholy glance at a passing stroller and her attempt to read aloud a letter about her sister's pregnancy that ends with Streep crying in the arms of her husband.
Julie & Julia will undoubtedly boost the sales of Mastering the Art of French Cooking and Powell's book upon which the movie was based, Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen. It may also inspire more than a few to attend cooking classes or at least try their hand at one of the duck, chicken, or aspic dishes featured in the books and the movie. The film also is highly likely to earn industry awards for many of the individuals involved, and although anyone nominated is deserving, no one should be faulted for being eclipsed by the transcendent work of the untouchable Meryl Streep. Much like Julia Child, Streep has carved a distinctly inspiring niche that each new generation continues to emulate.
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