Film: Julie and Julia

I have to say, I enjoyed this film more than I thought I would. I was ready for it to be totally saccharine, but it wasn't -- completely. Streep is completely charming: laughing and lovely as Julia Child. Amy Adams has a bit more difficult role as Julie, the woman that cooks every recipe in Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

Streep and Stanley Tucci are great together as a married couple that are still fantastically in love. Streep's Julia Childs is surrounded by love: a goofy, funny sister and some female French cooks that come to be friends and confidantes. Julie's marriage with Eric is paralleled rather well against the Childs'. But to me, similarities end there. Julie and Eric are starting out in the world and are navigating the waters of early marriage and careers. Julia and Paul are in their middle age, secure in their marriage. Julie has fights with her husband, is a fairly selfish person and doesn't seem to have friends -- at least not any that the movie bothers to name. Julia and Paul talk things out, support each other, and Julia seems to be a friend to anyone and everyone.

Okay, so it's an apples and oranges film. It's not supposed to be a perfect reflection of two women at different points in space and time.

Julie keeps saying that Julia saved her through food, and that food saved Julia. But the movie doesn't set up a construct in which either is in danger, other than Julie having a job that drains her emotionally and Julia not wanting to be a housewife. And here is the thing that I had a hard time with: the movie makes the current generation seem adrift and narcissistic while the ex-pats of the 1950's were finding ways to do great things.

After all, Julie is putting false constraints of herself to conquer French cooking in a year and is going through the steps that Julia took eight years to lay out and then get published. In other words, Julia Childs did the heavy lifting, Julie Powell isn't doing anything heroic: she's just cooking. Sometimes she cooks badly (she burns a stew); sometimes she cooks bravely (she bones a duck); sometimes she just cooks. But at every step she is looking back, taking courage and instruction from Julia Childs. And at the end, Julie is feted for her ability to follow Julia's recipes. Standing on the shoulders of giants, indeed.

So what shall we celebrate? Looking to our mothers and grandmothers for instruction? Shall we celebrate that we can choose who will be our role model? Shall we celebrate that we can stand on the shoulders of giants, even if our own achievement is copying their achievement?

I dunno.