Starring: Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, Stanley TucciDirected by: Nora EphronIn theaters: August 7

An absolute treat. That’s the perfect way to describe ‘Julie & Julia.’

In Ephron’s eighth go-around as a writer-director, ‘Julie & Julia’ features two heart-warming stories and hundreds of mouth-watering recipes. The story centers the lives of world-renowned chef Julia Child (Streep) – from the 1950s to the publishing of her first book – and Julie Powell (Adams), who wrote a blog in 2003 about cooking her way through Child’s ‘The Art of French Cooking Vol. 1’ in just 365 days.

Streep is marvelous with her soaring high-pitched Child voice and tender-as-a-good-fillet mannerisms. She captures the complexities behind a woman the world saw in one dimension as little more than a bubbly TV cook.

But Child had her personal tragedies as well, and Streep captures those, too. She struggled to have children and also boasted a not-so-perfect motherly side. She cursed like a sailor, and in one of her cookbooks, she describes the perfect consistency of a noodle as ‘like a stiff cock.’

Adams dazzles as Powell, a woman who worked a dead-end job in New York City and was adrift in life before deciding to cook her way through Julia’s book and chronicle the experience. She’s charming both in success and in failure. In one scene, she throws a food tantrum after failing to cook an aspic – a sort of beef jelly concoction. You root for her on the exhausting ride through weight gain, financial difficulties, and recipe disasters and triumphs.

The two women both have an inner strength, one that comes from their loving husbands. The chemistry between Streep and her on-screen hubby (Tucci) is unexpected and irresistible like two ingredients you weren’t sure would work but wind up as perfect compliments.

Adam’s self-indulgent friends are a little over the top and awkward in a movie that otherwise feels quite genuine. The ending sequence also misses the mark with its anti-climactic nature, but it proves appropriate, given the sort of peaceful plateau both women wind up at.

Above all else, the film is extremely visually appealing – from the Parisian streets to the homemade bruschetta. Plan to eat a heavy dinner before, or have reservations following the film because one thing is for sure: this film will make you hungry if nothing else.

jmterrus@syr.edu

Published on August 20, 2009 at 12:00 pm