Julie & Julia

This is my first non-KLue film review.

I immediately had high expectations for Julie & Julia when I first heard about it. After seeing snippets of it on E! as well as the actors' interviews, I was sold. A bit too easily perhaps but come on! Meryl Streep's starring in it so no other explanations are necessary. This woman attracts killer scripts like bugs to a massive, ponging Rafflesia flower (it smells like decomposing flesh so, sorry for that gross metaphor, Meryl Streep). Anyway, she didn't let me down with this film. Amy Adams, who plays Julie Powell, was also surprisingly good as the lovably frazzled and neurotic blogger, Julie Powells.

I've seen Adams in 2007's Enchanted and 2008's Doubt but I hardly recognised her in Julie & Julia. While she was charmingly fresh in both those films, she really comes into her own as Julie. I wrote her off in Enchanted because her dainty princess character is exaggerratedly frou-frou and naive, and I felt she was doomed to be typecasted in this kind of role forever. Actually, she still is - as the perpetually cute and innocent ingenue.

Then I saw Doubt, for which she was a best Supporting Actress Oscar nominee (work it!). While her role as Sister James is a major step up from ditsy Giselle in Enchanted, she kind of fades into the background as Meryl Streep's character, Sister Aloysius, jostles assertively into the foreground of your conciousness. You simply can't run, or hide, from this stern super-nun. Meek Sister James just gets lost, so you forget about Amy Adams.

Not so in Julie & Julia. I was just rooting for Adams the whole time. Every sympathetic nod and gentle smile of hers just sucked me in until I felt genuine compassion for this approachable little woman, Julie Powell, and her monumental task: to take on Julia Child's formidable cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, of 524 French recipes within one just year and blog about her journey.

The story cuts between Julia's enviable life in '50s Paris, learning to cook at the famed Le Cordon Bleu, and Julie's disillusioned life in the Noughties, living above a noisy pizzeria in Brooklyn, working a thankless cubical job while all her successful friends breeze past her. Julie's ambition to become a published writer changes her life when she takes the plunge and starts her blog, throwing her voice that she wants so badly to be heard out into cyberspace in the hopes that someone will care. And, of course, they do.

One scene which I think encompasses the generally optimistic tone of the film best is when Julie prepares a dinner of poached eggs for her husband and friend Sarah, then tries an "egg" egg for the first time in her life and loves it, to her surprise. Her wide-eyed gratitude to her hero, Julia Child, for opening up a new world of experiences to her is so sincere, and the wonderful thing about Adams is that she never overacts.

"Do you think Julia knows about you?", Sarah asks expectantly.

"I wish. I have this fantasy that she comes for dinner and I show her my new lemon zester," Julie says. "We become very close," she adds with a tiny conspiratorial smile, playfully wiggling in her seat, relishing the thought, before forking another mouthful of poached egg into her mouth, chewing thoughtfully as her smile falls away.

"The truth is, no one knows about me. I feel like I'm just sending things out into this giant void."

You see Julie, insecure and reliant, hoping that her ambitious culinary mission will give her what she's looking for - a deeper sense of accomplishment and self-worth. So, she doesn't give up.

All the images of deliciously rich French food, themes of hope and perserverence as well as the inspiring human relationships between Julie, Julia, and their supportive husbands, makes Julie & Julia DVD a perfect Christmas stocking stuffer. I don't think I could recommend anything more.

Christmas is in 13 days, then it's 2010! The older I get the faster time seems to go by. How disconcerting, *checks fearfully for wrinkles and crepiness*

I hope there's a movie solely about Julia Child's life in the near future. I'd also love to own a first edition copy of her autobiography, My Life in France. It was published posthumously in 2006.

Ooh, there's one at AbeBooks for USD$95, not including shipping. An early Christmas present to myself, perhaps?