Bon Appetit!

As I mentioned in yesterday's entry, Kyle and I went to see Julie & Julia, starring Meryl Streep as Julia Child and Amy Adams as Julie Powell.

For those of you not familiar with the movie, it is actually based on two memoirs, Julie & Julia by Julie Powell and My Life in France by Julia Child. Writer/Director Nora Ephron has seamlessly interwoven the stories of two women separated by 50 years.

Julia's story begins with her move to France due to her husband's diplomatic assignment in 1949 and follows her journey to do more with her life than be a wife who takes hat-making lessons to fill her time while her husband works. Julia's love of food inspires her to enroll in Le Cordon Bleu cooking school. It is there that she finds her true niche in life. Upon her graduation, she and her two friends embark on a quest to publish a French cookbook for American women, the culmination of which is Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle, & Simone Beck.


Meanwhile, in late 2002 Julie Powell is having difficulty dealing with her impending 30th birthday, on top of her job as a mid-level bureaucrat dealing with the after-affects of 9/11. One of her only escapes is cooking a meal for herself and her husband at the end of the day. As a way for her to get back to her roots as a writer and do something she truly enjoys, Julie embarks on her own quest - to prepare all 524 recipes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 365 days and to blog about her experiences. The year that follows is one that changes Julie for the better as she communes with Julia across space and time with the aid of a 752 page cookbook.

The movie itself has a running time of 124 minutes, which seems to be about the new average nowadays. However, I can tell you that I could have watched another 124 minutes and been just as thrilled with this movie. Nora Ephron has done a superb job combining two separate books into one thoroughly enjoyable movie. There are times when movies that follow two completely separate story arcs can feel frenetic, confusing and utterly disjointed, but that is not the case with Julie & Julia. The segments featuring each character are neither too long, nor too short, and the juxtaposition of the subject matter in each segment makes the parallels between the two women all the more prominent. It really becomes apparent that both Julie and Julia faced similar issues in their lives and cooking became their desperately needed anchor.

Meryl Streep as Julia Child is simply outstanding. Yet again, she shows that she can take any role and make it believably her own. After the first five minutes of the movie, you forget that you really aren't in fact watching Julia Child flit about Paris on the screen. Julie & Julia affords Meryl an opportunity to evince a full spectrum of emotion - from joy to sadness to vexation, each emotion is fully felt and conveyed to the audience with neither exaggeration or understatement. And then there are the physical similarities between Julia and Meryl that really let you believe they are one and the same. I would say that this is yet another performance by Meryl deserving of an Oscar nomination; her execution of her role is a joy to watch.

Amy Adams as Julie Powell also plays her role extremely well. From her frustration with an emotionally exhausting job to her struggles as a wife trying to balance her blogging with her marriage, you are left with the belief that she could be one of your girlfriends. The audience shares her joy as a recipe succeeds and tears up with her when one ends up a burnt, dried up mess. Some performances have the tendency to get lost when placed alongside that of Meryl, but that is definitely not the case with Amy; she most certainly holds her own.

I rate this movie a 5 of 5.

I'll leave you with the link to the official trailer, since I can't seem to be able to embed it here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjvJHsJD8ic