Okay, so I stole this clever head­line from an arti­cle I found online about the soon-to-be-released movie “Julie and Julia” star­ring Meryl Streep as my friend and amaz­ing men­tor Julia Child.
Writ­ten and directed by the equally amaz­ing Nora Ephron, the film is based on a blog and book by the same name writ­ten by a young New Yorker called Julie Pow­ell who cooked her way through Child’s iconic and first of many books “Mas­ter­ing the Art of French Cook­ing” — that’s more than 500 recipes in a mere 365 days.
Hap­pily, the Ephron/Streep col­lab­o­ra­tion has pro­duced a bril­liant, funny and food-filled film that cap­tures the per­son­alty and pas­sion of the won­drously charis­matic Child.
It is much bet­ter than Powell’s book which I found so flat and fake that I only man­aged to get through the first few chap­ters.
Also hap­pily, Amy Adams’s por­trayal of Pow­ell is as lively and riv­et­ing as Streep’s enthu­si­as­tic chan­nelling of Child who comes across as the life-affirming, warm, whisk-wielding woman I came to know from 1991 until her death in 2004.
Ephron knows what she’s doing when it comes to things culi­nary.
Her won­der­ful novel “Heart­burn” is a semi-autobiographical story about a food writer whose hus­band (based on Ephron’s for­mer hubby Carl Bern­stein of Water­gate fame) cheats on her while she is preg­nant with their child. She is played by — who else? — Meryl Streep in a movie directed by Ephron that came out in the 1980s.
Meryl Streep, who is much shorter than Child’s height of 6 ft 2, wore plat­form shoes and stood on raised floors to make her look tall in the movie — both ruses that worked per­fectly.
More impor­tantly, Streep man­ages to repro­duce Child’s deep, plummy voice per­fectly with­out ham­ming it up. Like­wise for the funny scenes in which she has those inim­itable kitchen acci­dents and flops in the kitchen that have been well doc­u­mented on her TV shows and, most famously, spoofed by Dan Aykroyd.
The scenes in which Pow­ell (Adams) cooks from Child’s book in her loft’s tiny kitchen — often suc­cess­fully but some­times not — are also evoca­tive and clev­erly done.
But it is the ten­der love between Child and her dot­ing hus­band Paul that is a key theme. It was he who encour­aged her to pur­sue a career in food and helped us all share this dar­ling, indomitable woman’s love of it.
Thank you Nora and Meryl for keep­ing Child’s legacy alive and well.
As Toronto chef/restaurateur Donna Dooher said when I inter­viewed her for Child’s obit­u­ary that ran in the Toronto Star on August 21, 2004:
“She loved peo­ple and knew cook­ing is the best way of show­ing your love.”