Making Their Way In the World

It’s well known that Meryl Streep can transform herself into just about anyone — Polish refugee, South African adventurer, Midwestern housefrau. But who knew that she could actually grow eight inches to fill a role?  Though a bio claims she’s only 5’6,â€� she towers over her co-stars in playing Julia Child, the outsized — in every way — American, who popularized French cooking for generations of homemakers. Streep may have had the help of propmasters to achieve the physical impression of height, but the grand energy and wit that makes her pop from the screen is all her own.

   The voice, Julia’s fluting, braying singsong, is one element. She flings her arms and body about, chopping a mountain of onions, whacking pie dough, as though she can’t keep still. Then there is the sensual, lustful pleasure she takes from a sole meunière, a raw oyster, or her husband’s chest. Rarely has the sex life of a middle-aged couple been shown so joyously on screen before.

   The only performers who come close to Streep’s magnetism are Stanley Tucci, as her husband, the diplomat Paul Child, who takes great pleasure in the pleasure Julia takes in cooking, and in a hilarious cameo, Jane Lynch, as her equally tall and vivacious sister, Dorothy, who visits Julia and Paul in Paris. Their reunion at the train station is full of shrieking and long arms waving. They are like two giant birds dancing about each other.

   Amy Adams and Chris Messina, as the modern-day half of the film, are perfectly fine actors too, and the tale of Julie’s quest to find a meaningful life and a path as a writer in Queens is well drawn and funny, but no match for Streep and Paris. Adams plays Julie Powell, a frustrated novelist working in a cubicle, fielding painful phone calls from the families of 9/11 victims. Living in a tiny apartment and jealous of more successful friends, she decides to cook her way through “Mastering the Art of French Cookingâ€� and blog about it. For months, her only reader is her highly skeptical mother, but finally she begins to attract fans, who encourage her to continue despite spoiled aspic, tantrums and bitter fights with her husband.  

   Powell draws a parallel between Child’s and her own quest for a place in the world. Julia tries hatmaking and bridge before she realizes that her love of eating is pointing her to her life’s work. Success didn’t come easily to her either. Initially barred from the advanced class at Le Cordon Bleu, Julia is denied the chance to take the final exam, and dragged away from her beloved Paris when her husband was transferred, again and again, by an administration in thrall to McCarthyism. A two-year cookbook project stretched to eight, and her first publisher rejected the manuscript several times.  Streep shows Julia’s grit and another quality she discovered in herself, fearlessness, as well as the sheer joy she brought to her great endeavor.  

   Nora Ephron wrote the script for “Julie & Julia,â€� and directed it with her signature flourishes, making clear how Child inspired legions. If this movie brings Julia to a new generation, so much the better.

   “Julia & Juliaâ€� is rated PG-13 for brief strong language and some sensuality. It is playing at The Moviehouse in Millerton, NY.