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Went to see Julie & Julia yesterday afternoon. My SO and I usually like going to matinees because it leaves our evenings free for our favorite activity.... eating out at really good restaurants. :-)
Anyway, I had a feeling this movie would be popular but I didn't know just how much so. Unlike other matinees when we have the theatre practically to ourselves, the theatre was just about FULL, on a sunny Saturday afternoon! We settled into our seats and finally, the movie started.
It opens with the Childs arriving in Paris for Paul's assignment at the American Embassy there. The costumes and evocation of mid-twentieth century design for their story is spot on. The dresses are perfect. And if that's the real apartment where the Childs lived, it is idyllic. I'd give my left eye tooth to live there. Glass and Mirror hallway, small and elegantly put together kitchen (nothing fancy though), lovely sitting room with the previous century's furniture and a cozy fireplace of course, with what appeared to be a coal stove.
Meanwhile back in 2002, Julie and her husband are moving to a walk-up in Queens. The 900-square feet they have here is evidently bigger than their place in Brooklyn. The kitchen is tiny. I swear it is no bigger than my little bathroom. It is a feat indeed just to cook in that minuscule space.
This production is a movie of contrasts and parallels: Julie/Julia, Julia/other women of her time, Julie/other women in her time as well. The rest of the movie is spend going back and forth from present-day New York to 1950s Paris in some well-timed transitions. When you are jumping time lines like this, it can get tricky to keep a viewer interested and Nora Ephron does a good job of not letting you get lost in either narrative.
As soon as they get to Paris, Julia is at a loss as to what to do with herself. She finds the then normal life of a diplomat's wife boring. Hobbies like millinery, and bridge lesson just don't fill the bill. Julia's got more on the ball than that. There's a quasi-montage of Julia trying to figure out what to do with herself while Paul is at work. This is comforting to those of us who have struggled the hard way to find our calling in this life. "Shouldn't I have SOMEthing to DOooooo?" She intones to her hubby over yet another sumptuous restaurant dinner.
Paul says, "Well, what do you like to do?"
"Eat!", she laughs while sticking another forkful into her mouth.
Eventually, Julia makes her way to Le Cordon Bleu cooking school. She doesn't impress the all male students and staff at first. And she's convinced the matronly administrator hates her. But, she practices hard at home. There's a great scene with Julia chopping away on some onions at home. It's not till the camera pans back that you see the mountain of chopped onions! Paul comes up the kitchen stairs only to be beaten back by the overwhelming odor.
We also get to see how Julia came to work with her two collaborators, Simone Beck and Louise Bertholle. They met in the powder room at an Embassy function. Bertholle is portrayed as a lightweight collaborator, so much so that Simone ("Simca") and Julia cut her share of the book profits to 18%. I'm not sure how Mme. Bertholle's family feels about that. The story of how the book came to be could be its own movie, I think. There was a very long delay, over a decade?, between their working on it and finding an enthusiastic publisher.
Julie, already a pretty good cook and feeling left out of the seemingly more high-flying lives of her friends, finally figures out that she could blog about cooking. Even better, blog about a favorite childhood memory: her mom's copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking which she absconded with on her last trip home to Texas.
It's not explained how in the film, but Julie also watches the original episodes of The French Chef. Either WNET was rerunning them or Julie was able to get them on video. I would love to know if it's out on DVD now. I have a copy of Julie Powell's book and maybe she says in there.
Also, what movie about Julia Child would be complete without the infamous Dan Akroyd SNL homage? It's here too in all it's gory hilarity.
The main criticism of this movie has been that the modern story is weak. I think that's unfair. Does Julie come across as a little neurotic. Well, yes, especially when contrasted with the feisty Julia Child. But Julie tells her story with all the foibles and uncertainties of the present. Julia on the other hand, had nearly a lifetime to simmer her life and come up with a compelling story. My Life in Paris was published in 1994, I think. That's a good forty years after the fact. You can forget a lot of your angst at birthing something new in that time.
This is clearly a movie born out of love: love of food, love of one's spouse, and love of life. It made me laugh and smile for nearly its two and a half hour running time.
A word about the husbands: we should al be so lucky to find such supportive mates. They may have eaten the drugstore out of TUMs and Alka-Seltzer, but they didn't let their spouses give up on their dreams.
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