Jamie passion and passionfruit!

This is no world beater as a film but as a rainy Sunday afternoon chick flick it does have some merits.  Not the least of which is Meryl Streep, who once again gives us a superb portrayal of the famous American cookery writer Julia Child, who living in Paris took classes in French cooking and then wrote about it to introduce the Americans to that cuisine.  We see her life in Europe, her supportive diplomat husband played by Stanley Tucci and her efforts to nail the definitive book with her local friends.  Streep does another masterpiece on accent and on body language – the tall almost ungainly woman with the passion for life and food.  Less gripping is the modern blog story featuring Amy Adams as Julie, the New Yorker who seeks respite from her day job sorting out 9/11 traumas to cook all the recipes in Child’s original book and write about them! Adams does her best and is clearly an actress of talent and her scenes with Chris Messina are good but they pale in comparison to the scenes with Child.  Good photography and music and Ephron has a sure hand with the direction though the script can be a bit cloying at times as she tries to milk a life lesson every so often.

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