“Julie & Julia”
4 out of 5 Stars
Stars: Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, Stanley Tucci
Director: Nora Ephron
Rated PG-13 for brief strong language and some sensuality.
Running time: 123 minutes
It has Meryl Streep and Paris and food — all divinely rendered. So what’s not to savor in “Julie & Julia,Ó a comedy of female redemption through victual ritual?
The worst thing that you can say: Some straight men and children might not get it. But, ah, for the rest of us! Though it goes down more as indulgent mousse au chocolat than as rib-sticking boeuf bourguignon, this bill of fare ultimately satisfies.
Before director-writer Nora Ephron became known for rom-coms (“Sleepless in SeattleÓ et al), she wrote about her personal experiences of food, love and a mature woman’s perspective in her best-seller “Heartburn,Ó with Streep in the 1986 movie version. The filmmaker brings her various areas of expertise together to adapt Julie Powell’s blogger memoir “Julie & Julia,Ó about the aspiring writer’s attempt to commune with Child from afar by preparing within one year all 524 recipes in the iconic cook’s seminal 1961 volume “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.Ó
But Ephron gives equal weight to Child’s experience. She also uses Child’s posthumously published autobiography “My Life in FranceÓ to create a dual narrative that shows the parallels between the two women. In so doing, Ephron finds an easy-to-swallow way to present some universal ideas about marriage, friendship, good humor, grown-up passion, hard work, and the needs of women to find fulfillment as separate individuals.
Powell (Amy Adams) lives meagerly in a grimy studio in post-9/11 Queens, N.Y. Child (Streep) lives lushly as a diplomat’s wife in post-World War II Paris. They were both government agency secretaries at one time and both are married to wonderfully understanding husbands. But they both long to be self-actualized and overcome life’s unavoidable pain through a zeal to share the precise sacraments of haute cuisine.
Adams may be the best actress of her generation. And she’s delightful here.
But there is no doubt that of the two “DoubtÓ co-stars, the legend Streep steals this show. A goddess of talent, she wields another astonishing vocal transformation and a hilarious, lumbering physicality to animate and make winning the already indelible personality of Child. Streep also anchors the more captivating of the twin storylines, with an adoring, adorable Stanley Tucci as her well-matched screen spouse.
“Julie & JuliaÓ’s technical appointments are also superb. A 1950s-era City of Lights sparkles. And close-ups, like of a perfect plate of buttery sole meuniere, sizzle so enticingly. You can almost taste it.
