Review 276: Julie & Julia

Julie & Julia is a lovely culinary comedy drama film

Based on the autobiography My Life in France by Julia Child and Alex Prud’homme and the memoir Julie & Julia by Julie Powell. Tanking place across two time periods, in 1949 Julia Child (Meryl Streep) moves to post WWII Paris with her husband Paul Child (Stanley Tucci)
In post 9/11 2002, young writer Julie Powell (Amy Adams) has recently moved with her husband Eric Powell (Chris Messina)

With this film you get just what it says on the tin: Two, tastefully told, True Stories.

Julie & Julia is basically two parallel storylines. The A story is Julia Child in her early years as an aspiring chef. The B story is Julie Powell
In a lot of ways Julie’s storyline is almost like a legacy storyline as we see how Julia Child’s work has impacted her and that impact is pretty profound.



Writer/director Nora Ephron effortlessly tells two stories

The score by Alexandre Desplat is beautiful - the contrast between the music he composes for the two  writers is fantastic. Julie’s music is very cooky and eccentric where’s Julia’s is more classical. The cinematography is splendid and captures the beauty of the two time periods. The production design (recreating both 1950’s France and early 2000’s, post 9/11 New York) is fantastic, the costumes are excellent,

Meryl Streep & Amy Adams are superb in their respective titular roles

Not lagging far behind them are Stanley Tucci & Chris Messina as their individual husbands Paul Child and Eric Powell