Julie and Julia (12A)

Julia Child was a sort of American version of Elisabeth David, the woman who brought French cuisine to the UK, crossed with our own early telly cook Fanny Craddock.   Child became a celebrity author and television chef in the fifties, when she introduced America to the joys of French cooking.  Julie Powell is a young woman, who found fame in New York in 2002 by cooking her way through all the recipes in Child's books and writing a blog about her experience, which later also became a best seller.  Nora Ephron's film is the real life story of them both. 

It's not an easy task to tell two separate stories about people who never meet but Ephron does it skilfully, moving smoothly and clearly from one to the other.  Julia's story is largely set in Paris in the post war years, where her husband Paul (Tucci) was posted as a member of the US foreign service and where she first discovered the glories of French food.   Streep is deliciously funny in the role, a colourful character with a bossy, booming voice that always sounds slightly inebriated and a blissfully appalling French accent.   Her performance veers towards going over the top but never does.   The mutual devotion of her and Paul is delightful and the recreation of a now much changed Paris of shabby but elegant cafés wreathed in cigarette smoke, as it was in the forties and fifties, is nostalgically evocative.

Amy Adams is very engaging as Julie, the secretary turned blogger in twenty first century Queens, who stuffs herself and her equally devoted and very cute husband Eric (Chris Messina) with every one of Julia's butter and booze laden recipes without apparently putting on an ounce.   She's right - butter does taste better than oil and her boeuf bourguignon looks delectable - but unlike other food themed films, this one doesn't go overboard on shots of glorious grub.   It's far more about the people.  

Ephron not only directs with aplomb but she's written a very witty script with convincing characters and manages most of the time to gloss over the fact that Julia's achievement is the greater and her story more interesting than Julie's.   It's indicated towards the end that Julia was not best pleased by Julie piggy backing on her success, though this is never really gone into.   The film is also perhaps a touch overlong and it's a bit disappointing that even at the end the now aged Julia and her young acolyte not only never meet but don't even exchange correspondence.    But if they didn't in real life, it would have been phoney to put it in the film.  

If you're keen on good food, in terms of eating it or cooking it or both, you will almost certainly love this film.   But the story overall is so genuinely charming and funny it will probably appeal, even if you're on a diet or never lift a finger in the kitchen.