Julie & Julia, based on the books by Julie Powell and Julia Child - 9 out of 10

Julie & Julia, based on the books by Julie Powell and Julia Child
9 out of 10


Julie & Julia is a charming, warm, at times effervescent comedy that benefits from the acting of two glorious, fantastic actresses Meryl Streep as Julia Child, for which she has won the Golden Globe and other trophies and was nominated for the Oscar, and Amy Adams as Julie Powell.

Julia Child has become a legend of the culinary art, during the last century and at the beginning of this one Julie Powell would bring a fabulous contribution, in the age of the Internet and blogging.
Julia is not just an extraordinary cook, that would not suffice to make it a sort of super star, she is an amusing, affectionate, kind, serene, determined and hard working woman.

When she would present to a printing house the vast, immense body of work, executed with a friend, the editors would be overwhelmed by the number of recipes and pages and she would suggest:

'You can divide it into volumes...sauces, number one, birds two, fish three, all the way to deserts, which should be at volume seven'
This is not a quote, the idea was that it encompasses a mountain of work.

The film works on many level, for aside from the multiple amusing scenes, there is the serious side and both Julie and Julia are excellent role models, formidable in their determination, dedication, capacity to work hard, resilience, courage...this is not an easy occupation, as some might think.
Take the killing of the crustaceans, which is a daunting, ultimately impossible task for Julie, who needs her husband to push the lid back on the poor, boiling creatures.

Julia has a sensational sense of humor...for instance, she is filmed when she is trying to flip something in the frying pan and it does not work.
She is amused, instead of embarrassed, agitated or furious and states that it does not always come to fruition and the cooks are alone in their kitchen and thus don't need to worry about minor flaws and mishaps.

Julia Child needs humor when she is learning to cook in France, in an environment where all the other are men, teacher and students, and the patron is a hostile French woman.
Grit has been recently discovered to be more important than intelligence, the IQ sort, for the EQ is another matter.

And resilience Julia has in abundance.
At the beginning of cuisine school, they all have to cut onion and she is, well, maladroite.

Therefore she takes home a mountain of onions and cuts it in her kitchen so as to make her husband, Paul Child aka the always fantastic Stanley Tucci, cry without pause when he gets home from the American Embassy, where he works.

We learn quite a few things from this movie and have some notions confirmed...
Everything is good with butter, or was it the other way round...if it tastes good, then it was made with butter.
Julie & Julia is not a light comedy about cooking, although that is an interesting side of it, for we even have the foolish senator McCarthy and his disastrous policies overshadow the life of Julia and Paul Child, reminding viewers of the lunatic who brings to the world, through Twitter, mad, false, racist, idiotic notions...every single day.