JULIA
****
Director: Julie Cohen & Betsy West
Principal cast:
Julia Child
Paul Child
Charles Gibson
José Andrés
Ina Garten
Jacques Pepin
Country: USA
Classification: M
Runtime: 95 mins.
Australian release date: 4 November 2021.
With her distinctive voice, impressive stature (190 cm, 6’3” in the old language) and quirky presentation style, Julia Child was a fixture on US television for close to 40 years and was, almost single-handedly, responsible for teaching a generation of American woman how to cook French cuisine. It’s not overreach to state that she literally changed the way America approached and prepared food. In the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, when Child was embarking on her cooking career, most food in the USA was pre-packaged and pre-prepared and TV-type meals went straight from the freezer to the oven, to be consumed on your lap in front of the tele. After Child trained in Paris at the famous Cordon Bleu cooking school, she set out to change her country’s eating habits. Now, all this and much more, is examined in Julie Cohen & Betsy West’s new documentary, Julia. Cohen and West are, of course, the Oscar-nominated co-directors of the wonderful RBG from three years ago. If you liked that film, you’ll thoroughly enjoy this one, too.
Child was raised in a conservative, upper middle-class family in Pasadena, California, but she was an intelligent young woman and she rebelled against the constraints of her Republican parents and society’s mores. She refused to accept that she was being prepared for marriage – she wanted adventure – so she signed up with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in 1942, the precursor to the CIA. It was there that she met and married her husband, Paul, a polymath and Francophile. After the war, the pair went to live in France and it was there that the scales fell from Child’s eyes; in the documentary, she tells a wonderful story about how a simple dish of sole meunière changed her life. It was while living in Paris that she and two friends, Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, started to write a book about French cuisine, containing recipes specifically for Americans. The resulting tome, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, took nearly a decade to prepare but it has been in print ever since it was first published in 1961. Upon her return to America, Child was asked to appear on a book review show on WGBH-Boston, then a local educational station. As part of her review, she prepared a plain omelette on air and it was a revelation. Cooking programs weren’t a staple of TV in the 1960s like they are today and her simple egg dish set off a light-bulb moment with one of the station’s producers and, voilà, The French Chef, Child’s fist cooking series, debuted in 1963 and the rest, as they say, is history.
Julia is thoroughly entertaining because Child is such an interesting woman and her high-pitched voice so unusual, emanating as it does from someone of her size. She was not afraid to make mistakes on air but her quick and ready wit kept the commentary coming and cleverly converted her errors into valuable lessons for the viewers. Cohen and West have unearthed a wealth of fascinating archival material to illustrate their documentary and have interviewed many of Child’s collaborators and companions. You don’t have to be interested in food to appreciate Julia because it is an interesting social history as much as it is a biography of a pop icon. There’s even a skit from Saturday Night Live featuring Dan Akroyd impersonating Child. It’s very funny. I offer just one note of caution, however: do not go to this film hungry. The macro food photography filmed in a recreation of Child’s French Chef kitchen is absolutely mouth-watering!
Principal cast:
Julia Child
Paul Child
Charles Gibson
José Andrés
Ina Garten
Jacques Pepin
Country: USA
Classification: M
Runtime: 95 mins.
Australian release date: 4 November 2021.
With her distinctive voice, impressive stature (190 cm, 6’3” in the old language) and quirky presentation style, Julia Child was a fixture on US television for close to 40 years and was, almost single-handedly, responsible for teaching a generation of American woman how to cook French cuisine. It’s not overreach to state that she literally changed the way America approached and prepared food. In the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, when Child was embarking on her cooking career, most food in the USA was pre-packaged and pre-prepared and TV-type meals went straight from the freezer to the oven, to be consumed on your lap in front of the tele. After Child trained in Paris at the famous Cordon Bleu cooking school, she set out to change her country’s eating habits. Now, all this and much more, is examined in Julie Cohen & Betsy West’s new documentary, Julia. Cohen and West are, of course, the Oscar-nominated co-directors of the wonderful RBG from three years ago. If you liked that film, you’ll thoroughly enjoy this one, too.
Child was raised in a conservative, upper middle-class family in Pasadena, California, but she was an intelligent young woman and she rebelled against the constraints of her Republican parents and society’s mores. She refused to accept that she was being prepared for marriage – she wanted adventure – so she signed up with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in 1942, the precursor to the CIA. It was there that she met and married her husband, Paul, a polymath and Francophile. After the war, the pair went to live in France and it was there that the scales fell from Child’s eyes; in the documentary, she tells a wonderful story about how a simple dish of sole meunière changed her life. It was while living in Paris that she and two friends, Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, started to write a book about French cuisine, containing recipes specifically for Americans. The resulting tome, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, took nearly a decade to prepare but it has been in print ever since it was first published in 1961. Upon her return to America, Child was asked to appear on a book review show on WGBH-Boston, then a local educational station. As part of her review, she prepared a plain omelette on air and it was a revelation. Cooking programs weren’t a staple of TV in the 1960s like they are today and her simple egg dish set off a light-bulb moment with one of the station’s producers and, voilà, The French Chef, Child’s fist cooking series, debuted in 1963 and the rest, as they say, is history.
Julia is thoroughly entertaining because Child is such an interesting woman and her high-pitched voice so unusual, emanating as it does from someone of her size. She was not afraid to make mistakes on air but her quick and ready wit kept the commentary coming and cleverly converted her errors into valuable lessons for the viewers. Cohen and West have unearthed a wealth of fascinating archival material to illustrate their documentary and have interviewed many of Child’s collaborators and companions. You don’t have to be interested in food to appreciate Julia because it is an interesting social history as much as it is a biography of a pop icon. There’s even a skit from Saturday Night Live featuring Dan Akroyd impersonating Child. It’s very funny. I offer just one note of caution, however: do not go to this film hungry. The macro food photography filmed in a recreation of Child’s French Chef kitchen is absolutely mouth-watering!