Word: ephron
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There are, of course, two Julias in Nora Ephron's new movie Julie & Julia. One is short and petite, the other extraordinarily tall and pleasantly beamy. One loves to cook, while the other lived to cook. Both are based on real people. One, Julie Powell (Amy Adams), had a bright idea, while the other, Julia Child (Meryl Streep), had a calling. Julie is a bit of a pill, while Julia, as played by Streep, is irresistible, the personification of movie magic. (Read TIME's 1981 cover story on Meryl Streep...
...Ephron's movie is based on the book of the same name, Powell's account of the year she spent cooking her way through Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking and blogging about her experiences. By turns amusing, profane and whiny, Julie & Julia was a best seller. It did not include a blurb from Child, who reportedly found Powell's project disrespectful and unserious. Thankfully, in writing her screenplay, Ephron drew on a second source, Child's memoir My Life in France (published after Child's death in 2004 and written with Alex Prud'homme). The Child...
...playing her lusty spouse look effortless. Ensconced in a beautiful apartment, Julia and Paul eat, make love and eat some more. "French people eat French food every single day!" Julia enthuses. "I can't get over it." Their only disappointment is that they can't have children, a sadness Ephron conveys in a few deft strokes, almost purely visual - as when Julia slumps against Paul upon the news that her sister Dorothy (the perfectly cast Jane Lynch) is expecting. (Read "7 Myths About Meryl...
...Ephron's screenplay hints at some distaste for her second lead. She shows Julie's undertaking as a scheme to keep up with a friend who has a successful blog rather than as a pure homage to Child. "I could write a blog," Julie tells her cute husband Eric (Chris Messina), who agrees, because he is as supportive and helpful as a Seeing Eye dog. She is pleased by her growing mastery of French cooking, but what she's really exultant about is the growing number of comments on her blog. She has followers, the contemporary dream. After...
...century memoirist, who makes him- or herself interesting in order to write about it, usually through a time-centric gimmick, like spending a few months at, say, an ashram. Powell belongs to this last category, and cannily the movie lets us see how the wheels turn in her head. Ephron includes Child's real-life reaction to Powell's blog and lets it stand; she doesn't try to turn the two women into soul sisters, an unusual move for the director who has brought us so many happy, tidy endings (Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail). Powell...