Julie and Julia (2009)

2 years ago

Julie and Julia (2009)

Let’s get this out of the way: Meryl Streep is wonderful in Julie and Julia, as you have probably already gathered from reviews and previews of the film. I have no idea if she actually captures anything but the outward tics of the real Julia Child (her booming voice, tipsy posture, and goofy sense of humor), but Streep creates somebody who I hope existed. Her Julia is lively, funny, bawdy, and adventurous. She’s also lusty - the scenes between Child and her husband Paul (played by Stanley Tucchi) are full of, well, sex, or at least hints of sex, which you don’t often see in films about marriage or middle-aged couples.

Streep’s Julia springs to life minus the tedious flashbacks and psychologizing that usually accompany any famous figure in a movie, which is a credit to writer/director Nora Ephron, who certainly could have given a 6-foot-tall woman, who remained a virgin until almost 40, some deep dark psychological hangups. Thankfully, the movie doesn’t try to construct any great moments of humiliation, loss, or challenge to pin Julia’s ambitions on: Julia sets out in creating her book almost by accident; her great passion seems to be for the joys of life, not the rewards of a writing or cooking career.

So, yes, the parts of the movie about Julia Child are delightful in a light, fun way. Unfortunately, the entire movie isn’t about Julia Child. It’s also about Julie Powell, a thirty-year-old writer working a miserable deskjob who, in 2003, begins to blog her way through Julia Child’s French Cookbook. The movie crosscuts between Julia - and her budding career as an expert in French cooking - and Julie, as she cooks through the book and, in turn, gets her own book deal and learns something about herself. Or so I suppose that is what we are supposed to get out of it. The film offers a few misty moments where Julie thanks Julia for “saving her” (giving her something to do after work?), but it’s never clear exactly what Julie was saved from - not ever getting a book published? Working a crappy job?

This general fuzziness around Powell’s character is the primary problem of Julie and Julia. It’s hard to know exactly who she is. The viewer is supposed to believe that Powell is self-centered, neurotic, and domineering. It’s hard to believe this, though, when Powell is played by an actress like Amy Adams, whose big-eyed adorableness belies almost all of her attempts at annoying us with her supposed self-obsession.

The “Julie” part of the movie also has a loving married couple at its center: Powell and her husband, Eric (Chris Messina). Although neither Adams nor Messina are bad in the film (in fact, they both have some lovely moments), they just don’t make sense as the characters they are supposed to be. Messinna is the saintly husband who bends over backwards for Powell despite the stresses of her project, but I had a hard time figuring out exactly how she was more neurotic and self-centered after beginning the project, since pre-project she seemed equally whiny and self-centered (if in a generally affable and adorable way - we are talking about Amy Adams here).

When Eric does finally stop being the most agreeable husband in the world, he chooses a strange moment to let loose - right after Julie misses out on an opportunity to do an interview with a New York Times columnist about her blog. Frankly, it seemed like a pretty good moment for her to act whiny and defeated. In a scene where we are supposed to sympathize with Eric’s anger, the audience is left confused - and these moments happen throughout the movie. At one point, when Julie’s friend agrees that she is a “bitch”, I actually had to go back and think if I’d missed some scene in which Amy Adams had acted like a bitch. But no, this was yet another part of her personality that simply didn’t come through on screen.

Although Adams and Messinna do their best, it’s clear the writing just isn’t there to give them any real characters to play, and any characterizations they try to offer up don’t quite fit the formulaic plot of the movie, which seems to necessitate some big bust-up between the lovers at the eleventh hour. This is another primary problem with Julie and Julia- it tries to fit within the conventions of a romantic comedy without actually being a romantic comedy. Part of the reason why the Julia scenes work so much better than the Julie ones is that Julia’s story doesn’t allow for this kind of plot. Streep and Tucci express their various dissapointments and uncertainties in ways that ring true to actual experience. Julia’s struggle to get her book published doesn’t involve a dramatic argument or Julia breaking down in tears in the street of Paris - she smokes, she complains to her friends and husband, and she lives her everyday life despite a real disappointment.

This is a movie that doesn’t need a big moment of tension or a “make or break” scene. It could have been a lovely meditation on frustrated modern ambition being overcome by a sheer love of life, and the art that can pour out of it. The lesson here is that Julia enjoyed her life, even before she had a book. To make Julie, the polar opposite of Julia, a real character, Ephron should have put more time into giving her some context. How long has she wanted to be a writer? What does her husband do for a living? Who are her favorite writers? We don’t really learn anything about who Julie is aside from the telegraphed indications of what kind of person she’s supposed to be.

I was ready to go into the movie rooting for Julie. After all, I’m a writer who hasn’t managed to publish a book yet. I’m almost thirty. I have a copy of the Julia Child cookbook and love French food. I’ve had many a crappy desk job. And I even have a saintly husband. Still, I couldn’t quite root for Julie and spent most of the modern-day scenes waiting for Meryl Streep to come back on screen.

Letitia Trent is a writer, poet, and teacher living in Vermont. Her chapbook, The Medical Diaries, was recently published by Scantily Clad Press. She keeps a baking blog here.