Ephron’s signature dish: Julie and Julia

Movie Review by Flo Martin

The title says it all: the couple in the film is composed of Julie, a New Yorker who turns thirty, and lives with her husband Eric in Queens over a pizzeria, and Julia, sixty years her senior, who experienced post World War II Paris and its delights (however, we never see the grunginess of the Paris of the time that is so vivid in Julia Child’s autobiography, My Life in France, 2003, co-written with Alex Prud’homme). Julie realizes her life is not what she expected and challenges herself to cooking all of Julia Child’s recipes from the latter’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking (1961) over one year. She blogs about it everyday: Julia Child is her heroin, her “imaginary friend,” the ideal mother (especially in contrast with her own hyper conservative mum whose stern phone calls come from — guess where? — Texas…). Julie relates to Julia through her own cooking and a heavy dose of admiration: she describes Julia as goodness incarnate.

Yet, despite the title, the main characters end up being French dishes concocted by, first and fleetingly, French chefs, then Julia and lastly Julie. Julia Child’s epiphany so well described in her autobiography provides the viewer’s entry into their mouth-watering world. The famous Rouen sole meunière is shot from a high angle as the chef separates the bones from the flaky flesh, and serves the fish to an exuberant Julia (Meryl Streep, whose voice has changed registers for the occasion).

From then on, as Julia learns to cook French dishes, and as Julie replicates Julia’s recipes, the filmic narrative whets everyone’s appetite. It is better than a filmed cooking lesson: we see how to slice onions, poach an egg, make and flip an omelet; we learn how to be decisive when it comes to boiling a lobster or trussing a duck, and how to be forgiving to ourselves if our tarte Tatin has not turned out exactly as perfectly as we had predicted. Julia tells us her secret to a mayonnaise that never turns. Julie reminds us of the importance of timing to cook a boeuf bourguignon.

The tone is light, Julia is delightfully quirky and Julie is moving. The film has all the ingredients of a Nora Ephron well made, elegantly served film. It also has its own signature technological gizmo that defines relationships (remember the radio show in Sleepless in Seattle, 1993, and email in You’ve Got Mail, 1998?) Here, it is blogging, described by Ephron as a complex phenomenon: a way to publish oneself bordering on narcissism, a way to focus, a way to enter and/or create new networks with unknown people. Yet, it still takes a New York Times article to propel Julie into the limelight. The end is interesting: Julie becomes famous, after having blogged in the shadow of Julia. In other words: blogs lead to fame, and the American dream lives on albeit through sweating your way through mastering the art of French cooking.