Two Books-One Movie

It’s not easy to convert a 400-page book into a 120 minute motion picture. Too often an exiting movie goer can be heard saying, “The book was better”.   For the most part, book lovers are a hard group to please.

Kudos to Nora Ephron for undertaking the daunting task of merging the essentials from two books into 125 minutes of pure entertainment.

Julie and Julia depicts Julie Powell’s search for an escape from her mundane life,  by cooking her way though Mastering the Art of French Cooking and blogging about her experiences along the way.

My Life in France chronicles Julia Child’s introduction to and continuing love affair with French cuisine.

It can’t be said too much or too often:  Meryl Streep is truly an amazing actress.  Ms. Streep transformed herself into Julia Child in every way possible: looks, mannerisms and speech.  She nailed Child’s warbling, gusty, enthusiastic, just short of pompous style of speaking from the movie’s opening to the ending credits.

Watching Streep interact with her make believe husband (played superbly by Stanley Tucci) as he gleefully initiated his new bride into the joys of French cooking was a delight.

After a brief stint at hat making, Julia muscled her way into an all male class at the prestigious Le Cordon Bleu and proceeds to massacre an onion to the amusement of the other students.

But nothing daunts Julia for long as we see in the next scene. Child’s diplomat husband reels, stumbles and finally retreats as the acrid aroma emanating from a veritable mountain of ‘properly’ chopped onion greets him at the kitchen door.  Words were not possible nor necessary.   Veterans Streep and Tucci relied almost entirely on facial expressions and subtle gestures for communication in this humorous scene.

Some reviewers faulted Ephron for portraying the Child’s marriage as idyllic, free of tension and discord.  But their life was hardly problem free:  Julia couldn’t conceive, Paul was scrutinized by Joe McCarthy’s goon squad and the U. S. government seemed to change diplomatic postings willy nilly.

Ephron didn’t ignore these setbacks, but instead used them as a backdrop for Julia’s  struggle with the French language, and her collaboration with  fellow cooks Simone Beck (Linda Emond) and Louisette Bertholle (Helen Carey) to produce the first French cookbook for American housewives, Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

Fast forward 40 years and 3,000 miles to a dismal apartment in Queens where the  normally adorable Amy Adams assumes the persona of Julie Powell, one dissatisfied young woman. Bolstered by attentive husband (Chris Messina), Powell sets out to change her life through cooking. At 35,  Adams stretched beyond her usual cheerfully optimistic role to one of insecurity, resentment and gloom.

That’s not to say that some of Powell’s experience weren’t funny-they were.  The most memorable was her bout with the lobsters.  The sack quivered and rattled ominously on the ride home from the store prompting nervous glances from the would be chef. Once, the wily crustaceans hit the boiling water, the pot lid clattered to the floor driving Powell from the kitchen.

Ephron could not intertwine the life of Julia and Julie since they had never met much to the latter’s regret.  Instead the director chose to skip back and forth from the 1950s to 2002 as the movie progressed which several reviewers found distracting.

Thankfully, Ephron’s screenplay eliminated most of the profanity that made Julie and Julia almost unreadable.  Regardless of Ephron’s efforts, the Julie vignettes were just not as interesting as those of Julia.

Many reviewers, myself included, would have preferred more Julia, and little or no Julie.