Also, because the "Julie & Julia" coverage is embarrassingly over-saturated, I'm not going to review it for SI. I admit I'm slightly relieved about not having to write it. I'm not a critic, so my review would deal primarily with the food aspects of the movie, which, as I noted in my Susan Spungan post, were flawless. The movie itself, however, was far from it.
I struggle to describe exactly what was wrong with it because I thought aspects of it were lovely, even moving. But there was something dishonest in the way the two stories were forced into parallel structures for the sake of the film's cinematic palatability. Something that I have too many specific words and instances for, but which ultimately amount to very little. Yesterday, Gourmet.com ran "The Trouble with Julie & Julia," an occasionally self-indulgent detailing of its writer Laura Shapiro's thoughts on Julia Child and Meryl Streep's portrayal of her, that concludes in a very apt detailing of at least part of what feels wrong in the film.
...Ephron is wholly faithful to the essence of Julia’s experience, and to the reasons why her years in Paris contributed so markedly to American culinary history. When Julia went to the Cordon Bleu and learned how to cook—by hand, without fancy equipment, from the ground up—she was also learning that passion and appetite weren’t enough. She needed technique, confidence, patience, and a host of finicky skills that only came with practicing. It was an approach to cooking that had all but disappeared from American kitchens, and without it Americans were never going to know what they were missing. That’s why she wanted to teach—because mastering French cooking had ushered her into a world so fascinating, so enlightening, and so endlessly delicious she thought everyone deserved access to it.
The idea of Powell as a contemporary heir to this personal and culinary epic is absurd. Nothing in her relation to the kitchen offers the slightest hint that she has learned anything at all from her heroine. In the film, Adams tackles each recipe as if it’s her opponent on a battlefield and the only point of cooking is victory. If the dish comes out well, she glows; if it fails, she throws a tantrum. Watching tapes of The French Chef (splendidly recreated with Streep as the 1960s Julia), her sole reaction to the sight of a genuine master at work is to coo, “She’s so adorable.” This is a journey of self-discovery? At the end, she visits the Julia Child kitchen exhibit at the Smithsonian, and her husband takes a picture of her mugging at a portrait of Julia (i.e. Streep). It’s completely unbearable.
Although I don't think the movie suggests that Julie Powell is "a contemporary heir to" Julia Child, I can see why it might seem that way. The end of the movie tries to tie things up in a convenient bow -- Julia gets Mastering the Art of French Cooking published and Julie's answering machine fills with offers for movie and book deals. Success/success suggests an aligning of fates to a point, not destinies. But more importantly, Shapiro says, "Powell progresses from cute to famous without anything happening on the inside." Or on the outside, I'd like to note, since she's supposedly gaining all this weight from cooking. Again, it's insincere but insignificant, shortsighted maybe.
I guess I just feel that for a movie that has a built in resonance with 20-30 year olds who have graduated college only to find that they've leaned everything except how to become the people they want to be, there are so few moments that honor that connection. "Julie & Julia" starts strong and then gets lost along the way. By the end, we know that we are not Julie. But maybe that's the thing that pushes us in the kitchen after seeing the movie -- the need to start as Julie starts, honestly and with integrity, and actually finish that way.
No comments:
Post a Comment