Yesterday’s cool, drizzly weather suggested an evening spent curled up with a good book and a pot of tea, so much so that I nearly forgot I had other plans.
My friend H, who manages a bookstore, was given a slew of free passes to a preview of Julie & Julia, the new film based on Julie Powell’s blog, The Julie/Julia Project (It’s now defunct; Clicking on “Why Julie, Why Julia?” will take you to the first post. You can read Powell’s current blog here). I was interested in this film for several reasons.
1. Powell’s was one of the first blogs I read regularly, back before I started blogging myself in 2003. I lurked for ages, riveted by her entertaining prose and her project.
2. I cause gaper’s block when confronted by bloggers with book contracts.
3. I’ve met Julia Child. Twice. The first was at a formal event at my college. During my first weeks of my freshman year, which coincided with the inauguration of a new college president, Julia catered the food. Yes, my first week of college was spent eating menus planned and overseen by Julia Child, an alum. Was there anywhere to go but down? The second time we met was at a college reunion. I am sure I have told this story before somewhere in the dusty archives of this blog, but I will tell it again anyway, because I love it. I was with part of a group of friends gathering in the lobby of a dorm to go to some other location. Two of us were waiting for the others and we looked across and saw a larger-than-life woman in a chair on the opposite side drinking tea. We began whispering to each other, subtly, we thought: was it Julia Child? Or wasn’t it? Apparently we were not as subtle as we thought, for she called out to us in her unmistakable voice, “Yes! It’s really me!” and saluted us with her teacup.
I took the train through the drizzle, helping a clueless woman figure out the parking lot honor box on the way. It is so low tech, that it seems to confuse people: you fold up your money really small and push it in with the thin metal bar provided. But people are always looking for confirmation. It never comes. On the train, I sat in one of the single seats upstairs and watched as below a couple played checkers on a paper printout of a board with dimes vs. quarters. Once downtown, I sprinted through the rush hour streets toward the theater, curving around Wacker, which was swarming with shivering tourists who had clearly been caught completely off-guard by the autumnal weather.
I saw H in line and cut under the barriers to meet her, and was only heckled slightly by the guy behind us. I would venture that 98% of the people standing in the free pass line were either women or gay men. Most of the latter variety were talking about Brüno.
We all enjoyed the film. Meryl Streep was a fabulously over-the-top Julia, but not mere caricature (why can I never remember how to spell that word?). Amy Adams is adorable. Stanley Tucci was charming. Jane Lynch was hilarious as Child’s sister. The characters are designed for you to like them a lot. They are all a little too perfect, but it’s okay in a movie like this. The way the film cuts between the two stories — the evolution of Powell’s blog and the evolution of Child’s book — is brilliant and keeps things moving. The Powell story alone would not have worked on screen.
My main complaint was the dialogue, which seemed stilted in parts. Sometimes it was because of the way Nora Ephron extracted Powell’s voice from the pages of the blog. She used quite a few direct quotes, which was fun if you’ve read the blog, but which didn’t read as very natural dialogue on screen. The moment when Powell’s husband Eric mentions his “hyper-acidic stomach” comes to mind. Other problematic dialogue resulted from the way Ephron inserted backstory into scenes. Sometimes it just sounded awkward, contrived. But despite this, the pacing never suffers and the film was enjoyable from beginning to end. And all the actors were great fun to watch, with the possible exception of Times food critic Amanda Hesser, who plays herself in a short scene. But then what non-actor could possibly compete with the double tornado of Meryl Streep as Julia Child? She lacked the charisma to stand up in the scene, a fact of which the filmmakers seemed to be aware, because the camera was conspicuously turned away from Hesser during most of the scene.
After the movie was over, after watching a couple of hours of boeuf bourginon and melted butter and gâteau au chocolat, we were all famished. Although we considered walking to a favorite French bistro, in honor of the occasion, we ultimately decided that would take too long, and instead we headed to a burger joint around the corner and all had enormous, delicious sandwiches with cole slaw. And mayonnaise. I think Julia would have approved.
Posted by harri3tspy 
