(2009) As someone (male) who doesn't read recipe books or enjoy cooking, only eating, I nonetheless - as I did The Devil Wears Prada - savored this delicious entrée from director/screenwriter/producer Nora Ephron, who has made a layered vegetable terrine, well-buttered and lined with crepes ("Gateau de Crepes a la Florentine" from Mastering the Art of French Cooking) by cracking open two books and deboning them, Julie Powell's Julie & Julia with My Life in France by Julia Child with Alex Prud'homme.

Three years after marrying (at 40 and a virgin) Paul Child (Stanley Tucci), whom she'd met in China while working as a secretary for the OSS, Julia (Meryl Streep) - capturing the voice, ever effervescent personality, and appearance of the original (though at 5'6", numerous camera adjustments and other tricks were employed to give her more of Child's 6'2" stature) - the couple, childless, were in Paris for four years. With Paul employed at the embassy, Julia (no longer in government service) sought something to do with her time.

In Queens, NY, in 2002, an unpublished novelist, Julie Powell (Amy Adams), conscientiously works at a thankless job for the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, answering abusive calls; she goes home to a 900-sq-ft flat above a pizzeria with her husband Eric (Chris Messina), editor of Archaeology Magazine, where she finds cooking a comfort. Also without children (perhaps by choice, lack of space, and narcissism), Julie sets a goal to finish something for once in her life, with Eric's encouragement, to cook her way through Julia Child's cookbook (524 recipes) in a year and comment on her project through a blog: "Is there anything better than butter?"

Unable to find a French cookbook in English, Julia competitively signs up (the only woman) at Le Cordon Bleu for an expensive class in professional French gastronomy. After her lessons she goes home to make lunch for and then love with Paul, who praises her on Valentine's Day: "The butter to my bread, and the breath to my life." Unwilling to be outdone by the male chefs, at home Julia cheerfully practices cutting onions and pulling cannoli with her bare hands from a boiling pot: "These damn things are as hot as a stiff cock!"

The (bitch) woman in charge at Le Cordon Bleu, when she hears that Julia intends to teach kitchen chemistry to her fellow countrywomen, sarcastically says in finally granting the pupil a diploma: "You have no talent for cooking, but the Americans will never know the difference." With Louisette Bertholle (Helen Carey) and Simone Beck (Linda Emond), Julia begins giving cooking lessons; the three eventually collaborate on composing a cookbook for "servantless" American women "who do not have cooks."

Eight years later in Cambridge, Mass - having met Irma Rombauer, the author of The Joy of Cooking, and heard her complaints of getting cheated by her publisher; receiving word that her recently-married sister Dorothy (Jane Lynch) is pregnant; having to leave Paris for new postings before Paul's called to Washington, DC, to undergo an interrogation by Senator McCarthy's investigators (exonerated but disillusioning him with his career); getting a rejection from Houghton Mifflin - Judith Jones, an editor ("who recognized history") with Alfred A. Knopf, offers an advance toward publication.

Juggling her job, marriage (Eric tells her that she's become "a one-way street"), cooking, and blog, Julie guiltily ("I'm sorry") drops live lobsters into a pot of boiling water, suffers a temporary meltdown over making aspic, prepares a dinner of Boeuf Bourguignon for a food critic who repeatedly postpones the visit ("It's not the end of the world," Eric reassures), before Amanda Hessler (appearing as herself) writes an article about Julie's blog in The New York Times, resulting in a cascade of phone calls with offers of a book deal.

They never met, and though at 90 Julia expressed to others her lack of amusement with Julie's blogging, Julie held on to her devotion to her idealized inner Child.

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Copyright © 2009 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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