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.
