Julie & Julia: Streep, Ephron and the Joy of Cooking

Ephron's screenplay hints at some distaste for her second lead. She shows Julie's undertaking as a scheme to keep up with a friend who has a successful blog rather than as a pure homage to Child. "I could write a blog," Julie tells her cute husband Eric (Chris Messina), who agrees, because he is as supportive and helpful as a Seeing Eye dog. She is pleased by her growing mastery of French cooking, but what she's really exultant about is the growing number of comments on her blog. She has followers, the contemporary dream. After the New York Times's Amanda Hesser writes about her, Julie returns home to 65 messages from assorted agents, publishers and reporters and delightedly tells Eric, "I'm going to be a writer!" By then we know her ambition well enough to be surprised she's not crowing, "I'm going to be famous!"

There are memoirists like Child who write about what made them famous, or infamous. There are unremarkable people who write about a remarkable thing that happened to them. And there is the 21st century memoirist, who makes him- or herself interesting in order to write about it, usually through a time-centric gimmick, like spending a few months at, say, an ashram. Powell belongs to this last category, and cannily the movie lets us see how the wheels turn in her head. Ephron includes Child's real-life reaction to Powell's blog and lets it stand; she doesn't try to turn the two women into soul sisters, an unusual move for the director who has brought us so many happy, tidy endings (Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail). Powell is not devious or awful, but she's not exactly a basket of kittens either — not on the pages of her book and not as portrayed by the extremely game Adams.

Streep's Child is better than a basket of kittens. The performance is a hoot and a joy. It's not just a demonstration of tremendous skill; it's emotional persuasion. In two minutes, I had forgiven her for Mamma Mia!, and when she wasn't onscreen, I felt bereft, even though I knew a diet of nothing but Streep as Child would be like living on laughing gas, lobster and chocolate. Poor Adams. It's no wonder she seems to be trying too hard.

In the 1970s, I watched Child on PBS with my mother. It was obvious even to a kid that this tall woman with the tremulous voice was having tremendous fun in her kitchen. Even when she made mistakes, she seemed like a woman at peace. Ephron shows us the Child who was on the road to that peace. She'd won the romantic lottery but was still seeking — not fame or importance but a way to be useful, and to share. She was modern in the best sense of the word. Julie & Julia is structured around the idea of two women "finding" themselves, but in its examination of the way talent, hard work and ambition are doled out in unequal measures to different women — both ultimately successful — it's got an undercurrent of All About Eve. This is a charming crowd pleaser, but it's also surprisingly bold. Ephron has varied her usual moviemaking recipe, proof that Julia Child still inspires.

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