The Hindu : Karnataka News : A perfect souffle

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Monday, Nov 23, 2009
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Karnataka

Karnataka

A perfect souffle

GASTRONOMIC TREAT: Julie & Julia cooks up a neat story.

Julie & Julia (English)

Cast: Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, Stanley Tucci, Chris Messina

Director: Nora Ephron

This movie is a scrumptious treat and not only because a major part of it is about cooking, but is delicious, warm-hearted and a jolly throwback to days when movies were magical and when anything could happen.

Based on two bestselling memoirs — Julia Childs’ My Life in France and Julie Powell’s Julie & Julia, the film is the first to be based on a blog. In 2002, Julie undertook a project to cook all the 524 recipes in Julia’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” in a year. She documented her experiences in a blog called “The Julie/Julia Project.”

The film follows Julie as she wades through the cookbook, has various meltdowns, turns on her accommodating husband who tastefully holds her hand while she debones the duck and pops wriggling lobsters into boiling water. (Yes, vegetarians might feel a tad squeamish.)

The film moves back and forth between Julie cooking up a storm and creating a version of Julia Childs in her head, and Julia’s days in Paris as she goes for cooking classes and sets about writing her magnum opus, “French Cooking for Servant-less Americans”. The most heartening part of Julie & Julia is that while its principal characters are women, it is not about finding love and marriage and all the usual relationship twaddle chick-flicks are burdened with. It is not a post-feminist statement either, entirely doing away with men. The husbands are there, supportive and fully rounded characters — not some hunky commitment-phobe or the sensitive metrosexual.

Though the two women do not meet, their lives are intertwined. Both Julie and Julia arrive at cooking when their lives are adrift. Food gives them “something to dooooo” as Julia flutes. Intelligently written and directed by Nora Ephron, who earlier gave us movies like You’ve Got Mail and Sleepless in Seattle, the film touches upon important sociological issues, albeit lightly, to turn out the perfect soufflé.

The cast, particularly Meryl Streep as Julia and Stanley Tucci as her husband, is brilliant. Grab a ticket if your palate craves for something different from the empty calories of blockbusters on the marquee. Bon appétit!

MINI ANTHIKAD-CHHIBBER

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