Julie & Julia is two movies fused together: one film is about a woman who revolutionizes American cuisine and the other story is about a woman who finds inspiration from the first movie. Julie & Julia is the story of Julie Powell and Julia Child, two women who are connected by their common love of food. Based on the memoirs of the film’s two protagonists, Nora Ephron wrote a beguiling, sweet, and funny script about ennui and working out feelings of unfulfilled potential.
Julie Powell (Amy Adams) is low-level pencil pusher at the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. Her day is spent in a cubicle, listening to the tragic phone calls of 9/11 survivors and loved ones. The constant onslaught of devastating testimonies takes a toll on Julie and she finds her life aimless and without much purpose. Obviously, this isn’t a great look for Julie, who lacks the perspective despite working with people who have suffered unbelievable loss, but she’s left without direction and in need of a project. Her husband (Chris Messina) suggests she aim her interest in cooking by keeping a blog. She finds inspiration in the work of Julia Child, particularly her magnum opus, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, a book Child published with her collaborators Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle. Her aim is to go through every recipe in the book.
The other half of the book is a period film, focusing on Julia Child (Meryl Streep) and her time in Paris, discovering her love of cooking and her tentative steps in becoming a master chef. Former civil servant Child is living in Paris with her diplomat husband, Paul (Stanley Tucci), and finds herself bored, doing arts and crafts with the other diplomats’ wives. Looking for some direction or purpose in her life, she decides to focus on her love of food and cooking, and enrolls in the Cordon Bleu, impressing the all-male student body with her enthusiasm, work ethic, and prodigious talent.
As Julie’s year progresses, she finds her project to be more difficult than anticipated. The recipes are complicated and laborious and she’s starting to neglect those around her, narrowing her life’s scope on her Julia Child project. She tracts her progress on a blog that starts to gain traction and attract attention.
Whilst Julie is working her way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking, we see the toil that went behind the writing and publishing of the book. Meeting her future collaborators at a party, Child and her friends go through many starts, going through a couple publishers as the book finds a publisher. Whilst Child is going through this, she also has to content with personal issues, including her desire to have children as well as tending to her husband’s frustrated career (Paul’s diplomatic career hits a nasty obstacle as a result of McCarthy -era paranoia)
Ephron’s script synthesizes two books – Powell’s Julie & Julia and Child’s My Life in France (which she co-authored with her nephew Alex Prud’homme). It’s ambitious undertaking that is more successful when focusing on the 1950s Julia Child story. Child is a more interesting protagonist and Meryl Streep is a delight as the celebrity chef. Though Amy Adams does good work as Powell, her story isn’t nearly as interesting and the character comes off as self-centered and conceited. Whilst the script puts Child’s brilliance on display, it’s unclear why exactly we’re supposed to care about Powell. Adams makes her as charming as possible, she’s not particularly likable nor is her story all that interesting. It’s an interesting outcome as Julie Powell’s story is more in line with Ephron’s work – she tends to tell stories of young, pretty contemporary New Yorkers; she doesn’t do period films, but she succeeds in telling Child’s story.
Julie & Julia was Nora Ephron’s final film. She died not too long after the film’s successful release. It’s a fitting end of a wonderful career – it’s a funny, smart comedy that caps a great legacy.
A Seat in the Aisle 
Reblogged this on An American in London.
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