After moving to US and watching a few local American sitcoms, I heard the name Julia Child being passed around a lot. Sometimes as an inspiration, sometimes as a funny reference to motivated home chefs. I had never heard or read about her hitherto. Yesterday, I chanced upon this movie called “Julie and Julia” on Netflix. The description said something about it being inspired from Julia Child’s life. So I just thought I would watch the movie a little, because a) I am not very interested in English films generally b) I did not have any reference of Julia Child. But then I watched the movie.

It was one of those movies which just caught me off guard. It had such a warm fuzzy feeling to it. The story is about a girl named Julie who works in New York but hates her job. She is going through a quarter life crisis, and wants to do something big, some challenge that she can take on and come out top of it. And so, she decided to take up Julia Child’s recipe book which has 524 recipes, and decides to finish it up in exactly 365 days. Like most of us, her pump fizzles out through the middle of any challenge. To overcome that, she starts a blog which she updates everyday with the recipe she tried and how it turned out. The movie then keeps going back and forth between Julie and Julia’s life. While Julie tries a recipe, the movie transports us back to the time when Julia developed it, and how her life was at that time. The character of Julie is played by Amy Adams, and if I may say so, she is equally adorable. I could so relate to her when she starts her blog. And waits for people to read and jumps at every single comment. How sometimes, she is sleepy, and yet makes time to blog because she believes her readers would be so disappointed if she didn’t. It was so funny to see it in retrospective. 

The character of Julia is played by Meryl Streep. Forgive me for saying this, but I hadn’t watched a single movie of Meryl Streep, until yesterday. And that’s only because I am not as drawn to English movies as much as Hindi ones. But now, I am a big Meryl Streep fan. Now I now why people consider her a legend. The way she has played Julia’s character is so adorable, it makes you fall in love with both of them. Maybe it was Julia’s character that makes her so warm and fuzzy, but I still can’t shake off her beautiful face and smile. I had never seen Julia Child before I sat down to write this piece. Even though now I know how she looks like, but I think from now on, every time someone mentions Julia, I am going to think of Meryl Streep. That’s like two legends together. Too much to learn. Too much to love.

If you haven’t watched this movie, do watch it. Bon Appetit !

Leaving you with the official trailer to enjoy 🙂