Film Review ... Writing ...

Please note that this page is a stand-alone review of the film, Julia and Julie, starring Meryl Streep., that I wrote about earlier. Please refer to previous page, Page two, Writing, if you wish to 're-visit what I said about the film, there. I am including this page as it is a piece of writing work I had already completed, and it seemed a shame to leave it out. And here I will take the opportunity to say to you, when you're drafting a piece of writing work it is important that you keep it, even if you are not planning to publish it immediately, it has it's worth, and you can always take excerpts from the page/s as necessary. There is always the added value that you have written something different in parts which makers sense to the overall piece, that you may have left out of your earlier piece of work. I will continue ... The third film I have seen and keep going back to, with Meryl Streep is Julia and Julie, directed by Nora Ephron. The film is based on a true story of two independent lives in two parts and two different stories in two different time frames. The film opens with Meryl Streep as Julia Child, a cookery writer who reigned supreme in the cookery world in the 1950s and 1960s - and who trained to cook at the Cordon Bleu establishment in Paris when her husband, Paul Child was posted there at the American Embassy during part of the 1950s. How it all started for Julia was the idea to cook professionally for American housewives who did not have cooks or servants. This gave her the added idea to start a cookery school and teach those interested in good food, French cooking. Then there is the other story in parallel with Julia's experiences from a contemporary perspective, in that, Julie Jones and her husband, Eric Powell, a young married couple who settle in Queen's, a suburb of New York, and she decides to start a blog, detailing her idea to cook through the Julia Child Cookery opus, in one year, by cooking different recipes from the book - Mastering The Art Of French Cooking, every night after she returns home from work. And so, the film runs between the two unfolding stories. Meryl's performance as Julia is at times a little wistful; there are sub-texts which are not fully addressed in the film, but with just enough pathos to provide the audience with a good idea of what her sadness at times is about, the couple are childless, for instance, but this only serves to show Julia Child is more than a one dimensional person interested only in cooking French food, and Meryl Streep represents those aspects of her character very well. For more, you really ought to watch the film and see what you think, let me know. Good watching and good writing, and once again, bond appetite. Angela De Freitas