First, the requisite background, which I have explained repeatedly in the past month to blank Belgian stares: Julia Child was the woman responsible for bringing French cooking to America with her magnum opus, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and her television show, The French Chef.
The fact that there were people who had not heard of her initially left me flabbergasted, but I suppose French cooking is a little less exotic here.
Child followed her diplomat husband to Paris in 1948, where she discovered French cuisine, attended the Cordon Bleu cooking school and began work on her book.
In 2002, New Yorker Julie Powell decided to cook her way through Child’s book in one year – 524 recipes in 365 days. She blogged throughout the project, wrote her own book and is now, along with Child, the subject of Julie & Julia.
Child is brought exquisitely to life by no less than Meryl Streep, and the interplay with Child’s husband, Paul (Stanley Tucci), is food for the soul. But the real food of the film comes from Julie’s (Amy Adams) cooking project – and much of it is irresistible.
Eric (Chris Messina), Julie’s husband, memorably tears into a chocolate cake with his hands, and I only wished I could do the same. Julie spends much of the film terrified of deboning a duck for Pâté de Canard en Croûte, saving it for the last day of her year of cooking, but the resulting dish was so impressive (photo) that murmurs and groans of delight rustled through the sold-out screening I attended.
Not all her culinary exploits are successful, of course. Her boeuf bourguignon looks gorgeous – until she falls asleep with it in the oven and blackens it. Her foray into aspic is a downright disaster (which hit awfully close to home, as my husband had his own aspic adventure, starting with a New York Times recipe and ending with his tracking down the New York writer’s phone number for a consultation).
Between Julie living out the too-true ups and downs of a foodie fantasy and time spent in the company of Streep’s Julia Child, rather than “enjoy the film”, I say, “Bon Appétit!”
www.julieandjulia.com