“When you talk about passion, Julia Child didn’t just have it for her husband or cooking, she had a passion for living. Real, true joie de vivre. She loved being alive, and that’s inspirational in and of itself.” – Meryl Streep
It would be easy to think Julie & Julia was simply about one woman’s mission to master the fine art of French cooking. Not so, says director-writer-producer Nora Ephron.
“It’s about love, it’s about marriage, it’s about changing your life,” says Ephron of the themes that motivated her to make Julie & Julia.
Producer Laurence Mark agrees. “Julie Powell and Julia Child both discovered a passion – in each case, a passion for food – that got them through tough or uncertain times. The movie is also about marriage – how it’s a delicate balancing act. Julie and Julia have both somehow figured this out, and no matter the ups and downs, they’re crazy about their spouses and their spouses are crazy about them.”
The film takes the unusual approach of adapting and interweaving two celebrated memoirs: Julie & Julia by Julie Powell and My Life in France by Julia Child with Alex Prud’homme. My Life in France is Child’s own story of her years in post-World War II Paris as the wife of American foreign-service employee Paul Child, when she was able to turn her ardor for French cooking into a dedicated mission to spread its pleasures to American households.
After becoming the first American woman to study at the famous Cordon Bleu cooking school, she popularised French cuisine in America by co-writing the English-language cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The book’s popularity led to a cooking show career that made her a household name in the US. More than anyone else, Child steered American eaters away from the canned, the frozen and the processed and into food that was fresh, flavorful and made with unbridled joy – a wonderful metaphor for approaching life.
“When you talk about passion, Julia Child didn’t just have it for her husband or cooking, she had a passion for living,” says Streep. “Real, true joie de vivre. She loved being alive, and that’s inspirational in and of itself.”
Ups and downs blogged
A half-century later, in 2002, New Yorker Julie Powell is nearing 30 and dissatisfied in an emotionally-depleting day job. Spurred to change her life, she decided to cook her way through Child’s masterpiece – 524 recipes in 365 days – and chronicle her efforts in a blog. With the encouragement of her husband Eric – who was happy to devour the fruits of her labors – Julie began detailing the ups and downs of her time-consuming project.
Powell’s writings became so popular that, like Child, she got her own culinary adventure published: Julie & Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously was released in 2005.
“Both stories were going to be about marriage and food, two things that certainly go together in most people’s lives,” says Ephron.
“When you’re in the romantic comedy business, the movie ends when people say ‘Will you marry me?’ It’s very rare to find something about what happens next, where you’ve got two equally smart people in a relationship who adore each other. It’s one of the reasons I think Meryl was completely drawn to the movie.”
Though Streep is a home cook and Adams took classes before filming got underway, both were coached in French cooking techniques by culinary consultant Susan Spungen, including the deboning of that duck, not to mention the trick of flipping an omelette. “That was a difficult scene to coordinate, because we had to get all these actors playing students in the Cordon Bleu to flip their omelets at the same time along with Meryl,” says Spungen. “We gave Meryl some on-the-spot last-minute omelette-flipping lessons in our kitchen before she went on to film the scene. But she aced it, she was brilliant. She can swing a fish around in a piece of cheesecloth without anyone’s coaching.”
Streep says the biggest thing she took away from her culinary scenes was the importance of good knives. “Chopping onions is a breeze if the thing is nice and heavy and has a great edge,” says Streep. “As Julia says, ‘Always wash your knives, sharpen them, dry them and put them away.’ A sharp knife is everything!”
DID YOU KNOW…
• During scenes showing the prep work for her cooking Lobster Thermidor, Amy Adams had to act with live lobsters take after take. When it came time to eat them on camera, Adams refused, pleading for fake lobster meat instead. “Cooking them in the scene before just traumatised me,” she says with a rueful laugh. “And now I cannot eat lobster anymore.”
5 OF THE BEST starring Amy Adams
1. Night At The Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian (2009)
2. Doubt (2008)
3. Charlie Wilson's War (2007)
4. Junebug (2005)
5. Catch Me If You Can (2002) |