JULIA

Directing: B
Writing: B
Cinematography: B
Editing: B

I don’t know why I keep watching documentaries about chefs this year. I’m nothing close to a chef, nor do I particularly have any interest in chefs, or cooking shows—watching people cook onscreen bores me. It’s like, who cares? A lot of people, obviously, or else there would not be countless cooking shows in production for decades now. I’m just not one of them. But, I do love a compelling feature film, regardless of the genre or the subject.

And, the year 2021 seems to have a thing for documentary features about celebrity chefs: Wolfgang, about Wolfgang Puck, has been streaming on Disney+ since June 25; Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain was released theatrically July 16 and is currently available on VOD for about six bucks. And to be certain, Julia will be available either streaming or VOD in a matter of weeks, which seems to be the new standard these days—so, do you need to see it in a theater? Only if you want to support your local theater chain, but otherwise, not particularly. It’s an engaging enough film, but it won’t be any less so on your TV or computer screen.

I will say this: Julia Child’s story is surprisingly romantic, particularly the period where she fell in love with her husband, Paul Child, while enlisted during World War II. Julia Child was fictionalized onscreen in the fun feature film Julie & Julia in 2009; it’s a bit surprising she hasn’t been immortalized in any other narrative feature. That film only features her as a character, played fantastically by Meryl Streep, in half of it, as it switches between her far more compelling storyline and that of a contemporary woman played by Amy Adams. The world needs a full narrative feature just about Julie Child. There could easily be multiple; I’d love a movie just about her and Paul’s World War II courtship.

Of course, a great many things made Julia Child a distinctive, groundbreaking and historic personality. All these other celebrity chefs who have gotten their own documentary treatment, arguably owe their existence in the pop culture lexicon to Julia Child, who started her local PBS cooking show The French Chef in 1963. Having been born in 1912, Child was already 51 when that show debuted, and her fame and success as we know it only followed thereafter; she kept working on into her early nineties, passing away in 2004.

She started her cooking show career in her fifties and still managed to stretch that career over 51 years. Co-directors Julie Cohen and Betsy West do a good job of presenting the many sides of Child, her blind sides and prejudices, and how she grew and changed and opened her mind over time. Child was clearly a complex woman, a person who never self-identified as a feminist but wound up adamantly pro-choice and would commonly ask during tours of restaurant kitchens where all the women were.

This is what made Julia work for me: although it features a plethora of shots featuring her cooking, it isn’t about the cooking itself as much as it is about her, how she came to prominence in a male-dominated industry—and, of course, how she influenced a cultural change in American attitudes regarding the tactile joys of cooking being prioritized over the mid-twentieth-century obsession with convenience and time saving.

Surely it’s just because none of the old footage was vivid enough for contemporary visual standards, but Cohen and West spend a fair amount of time cutting away from old clips of Julia and interviews with her colleagues and friends, to intersperse shots of succulent dishes being prepared, cooked, chopped or tossed. When it comes to Julia Child, the historical results speak for themselves; and considering it’s clearly not possible for Child to have been preparing the food in these clips, I found them both pointless and redundant, if not outright distracting. It’s really Julia Child who is the vivid screen presence, and they could not have gone wrong just showing more endless tables of the food she actually did prepare onscreen, degraded film quality notwithstanding.

In any case, the quality of the many documentary features this year about celebrity chefs is as varied as their subjects. Overall, Julia falls in the middle: it’s fun, if a bit lacking in getting to the true substance of who she was. She clearly comes across as an extraordinary woman, but there is little question there was far more nuance to her than this one film has time for. It’ll be a great choice for any fan of Julia Child or of cooking shows—or of cooking in general; these movies are typically great for foodies—but for the rest of us, it’s merely fine.

Undeniably one of a kind: Julia in her element.

Overall: B