In losing herself in the larger-than-life Julia, awkward except when wielding whisk like scepter, Streep physically conveys the transformation and triumph of a lost woman who finds her vocation. She is transcendent.
Yes, Julie & Julia is a double portrait of women who discover their power in whipping shallot reduction and wine into submission. But it's also a movie about food as sex (think of prep as the foreplay), about marriage, friendship, and those recipes for personal and domestic happiness that don't come in books.
Even if you don't give a shiitake mushroom about food, there's much to savor in this lively comedy with dramatic aftertastes.
Intercutting scenes from the lives of both figures (gleaned from Child's My Life in France and Powell's Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen, the movie spans more than a decade in Child's career but only a year in Powell's.
Ephron often jumps between parallel narrative tracks that ultimately converge. Previously she did this in her screenplay for Rob Reiner's When Harry Met Sally . . . and for her own Sleepless in Seattle and You've Got Mail. If the two-track structure works less successfully in J&J it's because a) the tracks don't converge and b) Julia is a fully formed figure, and Julie an unfinished woman.
Still, there are piquant contrasts between Child, who moved from the States to Paris in 1948, and Powell, who moved from Manhattan to Queens in 2002.
Child, who had always worked, followed her husband, Paul (Stanley Tucci, brilliant and wry), to his State Department posting in Paris. She is a stoic looking for meaningful work. She greets adversity with a shrug and a smile. When life hands her a lemon, she makes lemon-caper sauce.
