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Directed by Nora Ephron
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Julie and Julia There
was a time when Nora Ephron could write wonderful
movies, both serious and witty: I’m thinking of “When Harry Met
Sally” and “Silkwood,” which are
among my own favorites. But
somehow, starting with “Sleepless in Seattle,” I think her
writing got a bit sloppy and she let the actors carry the words instead of
the other way around. I say all this in sorrow rather than malice, because
people tell me she is a lovely, talented woman. Which
leads us to “Julie and Julia,” a film I was looking forward to for
many reasons, one of which is that I already have
“Mastering the Art of French Cooking (both volumes 1 and 2) in my
kitchen and I USE it. In fact I
used to make classic French baguettes (from Vol. 2) every week. (Yes, Spokane
is not a haven of French cooking.) The other reason has to do with Julia
Child herself, whom I fell in love with back forty years ago when she did her
wonderful PBS show from Boston.
And now, Ephron has written and directed the
film that cries out to be made about Julia Child, and fate has given her a
way into the story by means of the real-life blog by Julie Powell, who
decided in 2002 to make every one of Julia’s 524 recipes (from Volume
1) in one 365-day year. Because
Julie was also a lovely writer, it seemed to make a perfect match. Maybe
so, but Ephron has turned it into an over-written,
over-directed mess that demeans Child because Meryl Streep,
as Child, has nothing but mannerisms to offer and Amy Adams as Julia comes
through as a whiny Queens housewife with a very pert, if rather recent,
nose. I kept looking at the nose
instead of paying attention to what she was making. Instead of focusing on the very real
accomplishments of both women, she match-cuts from one to the other, to show
us no doubt just how hard real cuisine is to master. Yes it is, and there are dozens of
wonderful stories to be told (and shown) about it, yet Ephron
has avoided most of them. Stanley
Tucci, as Paul Child, is a saint on earth, and
Chris Messina, as Eric Powell, isn’t far behind. Great. But if you don’t have family
tensions to deal with, why not focus on the cuisine itself? Somehow, it gets lost in the morass of
the film. Streep does her best to imitate Child, and does a
more-than-creditable job. But
somehow Child’s genius eludes her, and for this I blame Ephron. Child
WAS a genius, one of the great women of the 20th Century, but Ephron tries her best to make her into just another
mortal. She was not. |