1. "Julie Powell" was too thin for someone so frequently and loudly lauding butter: if Renee Zellweger can gain weight to become Bridget Jones, so can Amy Adams. I'm assuming Julie Powell really did gain some weight from her year of culinary experimentation, though I have not and likely will not read her book.2. That brings me to point number two: I'd rather read My Life in France. After watching this movie, I want to know more about the childless Julia Child and less about the childish Julie Powell.
3. Julia Child in Paris appeared to be gloriously economically privileged. I find the mid-20th-century impulse of "servantless" middle-class housewives to master the art of French cooking as vexing as the early 21st-century impulse of middle-class foodies to emulate Alice Waters. It takes a lot of money to purchase fresh/local organic produce and a lot of time to make "slow food." Who can afford to do so, and who is excluded from making such "healthy choices"? It's worth thinking about.
4. The film is a pretty, persuasive paean to marriage. Indeed, I found myself falling in love with Stanley Tucci's Paul Child. What a wonderfully supportive, loving and sexy man, I thought (though I'm not sure if I mean Stanley or Paul, actually). And the scene where Julie's husband, personality-lacking what's-his-name, slathers chocolate cake all over his face was completely charming. It is gratifying to cook for someone you both love and lust after. While I can't quite put my finger on what the message about marriage in the film actually was (like, was it "get back to the kitchen, all you wives who love your husbands! but don't get so preoccupied with cooking that you neglect your husband's other needs"...?), I am left with this notion that "Julie and Julia" is at once heteronormative and it legitimates that pesky gendered division of labor that feminists have struggled with for decades.
2 comments:
I totally meant to talk about this last night--but ran out of time. The underlying valorization of heterosexual marriages and the framing of julie as 'a bitch' with an amazing husband was difficult. Particularly because julie wasn't a bitch-- she was whiny, narcissistic, and self-aggrandizing, but not a bitch in the same way that her other friends in the beginning of the movie are. But still, her path to absolution comes from bringing her husband back home and cooking for him, rather than for herself or imaginary julia. But in either case of julie/julia, the saintly husband continues to step in to 'save' said wife, either emotionally or literally! It definitely ran counter to the other messages of empowerment in the movie. That said, I still adored the julia child parts and could have easily watched an entire biopic about her!
Having not seen the movie yet, I find the review and comment very interesting (and weren't we supposed to go together this week? might I add?) OK - won't hold that against you.
I'm wondering if they said anything about Julia also being a spy when she was in France and learning to cook? That, I think, is one of the more interesting aspects of her life.
Also, I do agree that it is better to cook for others rather than for only yourself. The act of cooking is always better when you anticipate others reactions and enjoyment of the meal - also it's better when you do it with someone else. One of my favorite things is to watch my brothers cook together. If it's only me, which it often is, yogurt or a pbj will do.
One of the really amazing things about Julia Child though, is that she completely changed the way America cooks. We are mostly too young to remember, but cuisine was quite dismal before Julia.
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