Julie & Julia
Sep. 4th, 2018 09:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerLast weekend one of my friends merged her DVD collection with her girlfriend’s, and I snapped up their excess copy of Julie and Julia. I meant to save it for a rainy day, but then I went rock-climbing and woke up the next morning sore all over as though I had fallen from a great height - which in fact is exactly what happened, when I wasn’t suspending the entire weight of my body from three fingers, and don’t my elbows feel it - and I decided that was rainy enough for everyone and popped it in.
What a feel-good movie. I’ve seen it before (in fact I saw it in theaters when it came out), but it charms me every time. Meryl Streep is wonderful as Julia Child, an absolute powerhouse of persistence and optimism and joie de vivre; the early parts of the movie especially, when she and her husband are living in post-war France, are simply gorgeous. It’s a delight to Julia Child win over all the vendors in the the French markets with nothing but beginner’s French and endless confidence.
Of course, with such a joyous beginning, you can only go down. McCarthyism eventually forces the Childs out of the Eden that is Paris, and the movie never recaptures the pure honeymoon bliss of the beginning. But Julia’s perseverance carries them through. They eventually land in suburban America, which is a far cry from the picturesque loveliness of Paris, but they build a life there anyway.
I’m focusing on the Julia Child sections here because they are, by far, the stronger part of the movie. Some of this is simply a result of the subject matter: Julia Child is such a powerhouse personality that it would be hard for any other story to make space for itself. (Indeed, Julie Powell herself knows that she’s working in the shadow of the greats, and perhaps the most charming part of her section is her obsessive research into Julia Child.)
But the Julie Powell sections are also the parts that showcase Nora Ephron’s weird gender politics, as in: “What does it mean if you don’t like your friends?” Julie complains, after a disastrous lunch with her extremely successful college friends.
“It’s completely normal,” her friend Sarah tells her. (One assumes that Sarah feels she is an exception to this rule.)
“Men like their friends,” Julie’s husband Eric pipes up.
“Who’s talking about men?” Sarah scoffs.
Okay then.
Or there’s this later scene, where a dinner party that Julie was planning falls through, and Eric gets mad because Julie is so upset and all she ever thinks about these days is her blog and he storms out of the apartment. Apparently she should have just rolled with the punches when Judith Jones, the editor who shepherded Mastering the Art of French Cooking to publication, had to cancel for the last minute for a dinner party that Julie had spent two days cooking.
Now I think Eric is the one being selfish here, picking a fight when she’s just suffered an enormous disappointment. But no. Julie decides that she’s a bitch and Eric is right to be mad at her. “Do you really think I’m a bitch?” Julie wistfully asks Sarah.
“Well, yeah,” Sarah says. “But who isn’t?”
Julie is a bitch because… why, exactly? Because she’s got a project that she’s passionate about? Because she was upset when her big important dinner party fell apart at the last minute? Because she has emotions? Because her husband isn’t the absolute center of her universe?
Also, if you really think that being a bitch is a universal state - or at least universal among women; doubtless no one is talking about men here, either - if you can really put Amy Adams’ sweet Julie Powell in the same category as that really mean lady who ran the Cordon Bleu and loathed Julia Child (what kind of monster loathes Julia Child?) and wouldn’t even let Child take her graduation test and then rigged the test against her - then maybe your definition is just too broad. Maybe instead of declaring woman synonymous with bitch, we could just let women have negative emotions sometimes.
...I actually do really like this movie. And it does have feminist elements, too, like its celebration of Julia Child (especially Julie’s admiration for her - how often do movies show a woman idolize another woman?), or the way that it portrays cooking as a potential source of power and mastery, not just for men (“chefs,” after all) but the servantless home cook, too. It’s just that a couple of elements really bug me.
What a feel-good movie. I’ve seen it before (in fact I saw it in theaters when it came out), but it charms me every time. Meryl Streep is wonderful as Julia Child, an absolute powerhouse of persistence and optimism and joie de vivre; the early parts of the movie especially, when she and her husband are living in post-war France, are simply gorgeous. It’s a delight to Julia Child win over all the vendors in the the French markets with nothing but beginner’s French and endless confidence.
Of course, with such a joyous beginning, you can only go down. McCarthyism eventually forces the Childs out of the Eden that is Paris, and the movie never recaptures the pure honeymoon bliss of the beginning. But Julia’s perseverance carries them through. They eventually land in suburban America, which is a far cry from the picturesque loveliness of Paris, but they build a life there anyway.
I’m focusing on the Julia Child sections here because they are, by far, the stronger part of the movie. Some of this is simply a result of the subject matter: Julia Child is such a powerhouse personality that it would be hard for any other story to make space for itself. (Indeed, Julie Powell herself knows that she’s working in the shadow of the greats, and perhaps the most charming part of her section is her obsessive research into Julia Child.)
But the Julie Powell sections are also the parts that showcase Nora Ephron’s weird gender politics, as in: “What does it mean if you don’t like your friends?” Julie complains, after a disastrous lunch with her extremely successful college friends.
“It’s completely normal,” her friend Sarah tells her. (One assumes that Sarah feels she is an exception to this rule.)
“Men like their friends,” Julie’s husband Eric pipes up.
“Who’s talking about men?” Sarah scoffs.
Okay then.
Or there’s this later scene, where a dinner party that Julie was planning falls through, and Eric gets mad because Julie is so upset and all she ever thinks about these days is her blog and he storms out of the apartment. Apparently she should have just rolled with the punches when Judith Jones, the editor who shepherded Mastering the Art of French Cooking to publication, had to cancel for the last minute for a dinner party that Julie had spent two days cooking.
Now I think Eric is the one being selfish here, picking a fight when she’s just suffered an enormous disappointment. But no. Julie decides that she’s a bitch and Eric is right to be mad at her. “Do you really think I’m a bitch?” Julie wistfully asks Sarah.
“Well, yeah,” Sarah says. “But who isn’t?”
Julie is a bitch because… why, exactly? Because she’s got a project that she’s passionate about? Because she was upset when her big important dinner party fell apart at the last minute? Because she has emotions? Because her husband isn’t the absolute center of her universe?
Also, if you really think that being a bitch is a universal state - or at least universal among women; doubtless no one is talking about men here, either - if you can really put Amy Adams’ sweet Julie Powell in the same category as that really mean lady who ran the Cordon Bleu and loathed Julia Child (what kind of monster loathes Julia Child?) and wouldn’t even let Child take her graduation test and then rigged the test against her - then maybe your definition is just too broad. Maybe instead of declaring woman synonymous with bitch, we could just let women have negative emotions sometimes.
...I actually do really like this movie. And it does have feminist elements, too, like its celebration of Julia Child (especially Julie’s admiration for her - how often do movies show a woman idolize another woman?), or the way that it portrays cooking as a potential source of power and mastery, not just for men (“chefs,” after all) but the servantless home cook, too. It’s just that a couple of elements really bug me.
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