The Queen of French Cuisine
by Spence Cooper on 03/08/09 at 7:50 am
A Movie to Honor Julia Child
The Film Julie & Julia is slated to be released August 7th which stars Meryl Streep (Julia Child) and Amy Adams (Julie Powell) in Nora Ephron’s (Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail, Bewitched) adaptation of two bestselling memoirs: Powell’s Julie & Julia and My Life in France, by Julia Child with Alex Prud’homme. According to the film’s website, the movie is based on two true stories, and intertwines the lives of two women who, though separated by time and space, are both at loose ends until they discover that with the right combination of passion, fearlessness and butter, anything is possible.
Just Stared.com claims the film’s story surrounds Julie Powell’s yearlong culinary quest to cook all 524 recipes in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Powell chronicles her trials and tribulations in a blog that catches on with the food crowd. The film also covers the years Julia Child and her husband Paul (Stanley Tucci) spent in Paris during the 1940s and ’50s, when Paul was a foreign diplomat who was eventually investigated by Sen. Joseph McCarthy for alleged communist ties.
Merl Streep did an informal audition for filmaker Ephron when they bumped into each other at New York’s Shakespeare in the Park.
“It was before I even started writing the script,” Ephron told USA Today. “She asked, ‘What are you doing?’ I said, ‘Blah, blah, Julie Powell, Julia Child, 524 recipes.’ She went into Julia as we were walking out of the theater. She did her for a full 10 seconds. I think she even said, ‘Bon appétit,’ “the late chef’s famous sign-off from her PBS cooking show. “I thought, ‘OK, look no further.’ ”
Once Prada opened, Ephron says, “I knew if I could get her, not only would she be the best person for it, but she would also force the studio to make the film. She was a movie star at age 57 or whatever she is.”
“Meryl believed that in order to capture the essence of the character, you had to believe Julia Child is 6-foot-2,” Ephron says. “Actually, our ambitions were more modest. We made her 6 feet. We used a whole bunch of fabulous tricks. Everything we could think of. Ann Roth did amazing things with costumes.”
“Julia Child is not dead,” says Newsweek’s Dorothy Kalins. “Not as long as Meryl Streep inhabits her big-boned, 6-foot-2 frame; fills her size 12 shoes; sets the corners of her eyes in a permanent crinkle; and causes her voice—that voice!—to bubble up from some sweet, deep place in her soul. This is reassuring stuff for those of us who learned to cook from Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Watching the determined Julia slip a piece of carbon paper (carbon paper!) between two sheets of onionskin and roll them into her typewriter for the first time is quietly thrilling—like being there at the creation. Julia’s (and Meryl’s) diphthonging way of talking makes us laugh. Hell, her very laughter make us laugh.”
“French people eat French food every single day! I can’t get over it,” Meryl says as she begins her midlife culinary adventure.
