Julie & Julia: Nora Ephron’s magnificent, mouthwatering rom-com comes to Netflix – صحيفة الصوت

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Julie & Julia (M, 123mins) Directed by Nora Ephron ****½

France, 1949. Accompanying her American government official husband Paul (Stanley Tucci) on his latest posting to Paris, Julia Child (Meryl Streep) is immediately taken by French cuisine.

Barely able to boil an egg before getting married, sampling new culinary sensations with her gourmand husband inspires her to look at spending more time in the kitchen. However, to her frustration, there are no French cooking books in English, something she sets out to rectify.

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Fast-forward to more than five decades later and Child has inspired generations of American housewives with her seminal tome Mastering the Art of French Cooking. One fervent fan is Julie Powell (Amy Adams), who, in 2002, came up with a seemingly crazy idea. Depressed by the perfect storm of turning 30, working in a soul-destroying government job and the shortcomings of her new Manhattan apartment, she decides to air her exasperation online in the form of a blog.

But she needs a hook. Despite having never eaten an egg and her husband suffering from a hyper-acidic stomach, one glance at Mastering provides her with the perfect plan – she’ll aim to cook the book’s 524 recipes in a single year and document the journey online. After all, she finds solace in the kitchen, so how hard can it be?

Basing her screenplay on two books – Powell’s Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen and Child’s My Life in France – writer-director Nora Ephron’s risky combination (separate movies could have been made out of each story) of ingredients blends together with fantastic results. You could argue it’s hardly a stretch for the creator of Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail; after all, this is simply an amalgamation of those two premises (characters separated by space and the use of the internet as a communication tool) only, with two women as the main protagonists.

And Ephron does stick to her tried and true recipe, wringing the most out of memorable set pieces (Julie’s disastrous attempts to boil lobsters, Julia’s obsession with improving the speed of her onion cutting), conjuring up some superb match shots to segue between locations and scoring it all with old standards by the likes of Doris Day and Charles Aznavour.

It is hard not to be impressed with how well Ephron has distilled the books (especially Child’s memoir) covering all aspics, sorry aspects, of her time in France, without dragging out the running time.

Of course, it helps that the film is so well cast.

Adams (Enchanted), despite sporting the worst haircut of her film career, is a suitably winsome delight as our hapless 21st-century heroine, while Tucci (The Devil Wears Prada) provides charm aplenty in his supporting role.

However, they are just the appetisers for a supremely satisfying performance dished up by that indefatigable Streep (Mamma Mia!). Nailing that distinctive accent of Child’s, she also evokes her spirit and character with little flourishes, touches and nuances. It is a screen acting masterclass, highlighted by Dan Ackroyd’s ham-fisted Saturday Night Live parody which Adams’ Julie Powell watches in 2002. You also have to credit the film-makers for their use of camera, set and costume tricks to make the five-foot-six (168cm) Streep appear eight inches (20cm) taller.

By the time you add in the copious amounts of mouthwatering gastro-porn on display, the result of Julie & Julia is much like one of Child’s tried and tested souffle recipes, a light confection that is sure to rise, sorry, raise a smile.

Julie & Julia is now available to stream on Netflix.