In "Julie & Julia", she plays another real life character, Julia Child, a celebrity cook best known for her cooking show, "The French Chef". It starts with Julia doing her first meal in France, sole meuniere, in 1949 that began her new vocation as a chef. She was a government employee when she first met her diplomat husband Paul (Stanley Tucci) in the government agency, OSS, that eventually became the CIA. From there, the film intercuts to Queens, New York in 2002. An aspiring writer, Julie Powell (Amy Adams, Meryl's co-star in "Doubt" who got a best supporting actress Oscar nomination), is an ordinary government employee who has written an unpublished novel. She has this penchant for starting projects but never finishing them. One night, she recalls to her husband Eric (Chris Messina) about the time her own mom cooked boeuf bourguignon. This starts her fascination with Julia Child's cook book, 'Mastering the Art of French Cooking' with the aim of cooking every recipe in it, 524 dishes, over a period of one year. She writes about her cooking successes and failures in her blog that would eventually become her own book, 'Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously", as it starts to attract local and, later, national attention.
The film's director, Nora Ephron, intertwines scenes from the life of Julia Child in the 40s and 50s (based on Child's own book, "My Life in France") with those of Julie in the new millenium. At first, Julie's husband enjoys her project as it gives Julie a proper focus and he gets to sample the dishes she cooks everyday. But as her blog becomes popular and Julie becomes so engrossed with cooking and writing, her husband becomes quite exasperated and their marriage suffers.
Julia, in turn, is shown as she starts to learn how to cook in the 50s studying at the famous French culinary school Le Cordon Bleu, while she and Paul live in Paris. She eventually decides to write her cook book for American wives who want to do French cuisine and this takes her about a decade to finish after so many revisions. She'd later host "The French Chef" on TV where her larger-than-life persona made her a force of nature for American viewers.
If you're familiar with the real Julia Child, the first thing you'd notice with Meryl Streep's portrayal of her is that the similarity is uncanny, even if the real Julia stands 6'2" and Streep is only 5'6". She just doesn't mimic or caricatures Julia but brilliantly steps into her shoes to become her. Amy Adams is similarly splendid as Julie, whose life story is definitely more intriguing than Julia's, and we're sure both of them will be nominated come Oscar time. Tucci and Messina as their respective husbands give great support, particularly Tucci who has great chemistry with Streep. Also providing able support are Jane Lynch as Dorothy, Julia's sister that's even taller than her; Deborah Rush as Avis de Voto, Julia's perky pen pal who influences her a lot; and Frances Sternhage as Irma Rombauer, author of "The Joy of Cooking".
Ephron (who also directed Streep in "Heartburn") is best known for her romantic comedies, "Sleepless in Seattle" and "You've Got Mail". This is her first movie since the disastrous "Bewitched" remake starring Nicole Kidman. She is surely able to recover lost ground with "Julie & Julia", which is about women's quest to find a calling they truly enjoy. It is funny and endearing, no wonder it's a big hit in the U.S. The most entertaining scenes in the film are the re-enactment of segments from "The French Chief", including Dan Aykroyd's parody of it that's considered a classic. Some viewers might be disappointed that the two lead characters are not shown meeting in person as some parts of the movie seem to indicate this, but that's what truly happened in real life. They never met and Julia had already passed away.
