Julie and Julia

Having watched Julie and Julia twice, I have decided that Nora Ephron, the film's writer and director, ended up disliking the thoroughly modern Julie Powell. I also believe that Ms Ephron wanted me to end up feeling the same way as she did.

The dislike didn't manifest itself after one showing, because it's very difficult to dislike Amy Adams. She is a very charming gamine, whose honeyed voice and twinkly eyes could seduce anything on two legs or four. Even a millipede would purr. It is impossible to watch her in Enchanted without purring with a giggle, and she was far from overwhelmed in her supporting role by the on-screen mastery of Ste Meryl of the Voices in Doubt. As Ms Powell, she conned me into respecting her at first sighting.

The second time around, the details can be examined matter-of-factly. And Ms Powell is/was, clearly, as her character admits towards the movie's end, a very self-centred psychologically needy bitch (and inadequate worker and wife). Ms Child, by comparison, is seen as a total lady, albeit a jolly giant of a gentlewoman no one could fault for anything, as Ms Powell acknowledges.

They do not meet, of course, and Julie gamefully tells us that the nonagenarian doyen of cookbooks didn't want to meet Julie, a 30-year-old blogger whose self-proclaimed claim to fame was creating in 365 evenings all 500-plus recipes in Julia's renowned 1960s cookbook of French cuisine. Julia told a reporter that Julie's blog antic was "disrespectful".

It also demonstrated changing times and ethics. Julia took at least eight years to co-create, translate, re-write and multi-edit her magnum opus. Julie took a more year to use it up in her blog, adding nothing creative. Julia happily received an advance of US$1,500. Julie's overly patient husband anticipated a jackpot of US$100,000-plus for the book of his wife's blogs in Salon.com. There were other comparisons that were not all that odious.

Ste Meryl should, in a fair Hollywood world, win yet another Best Actress Oscar. She captures the astonishing vocal range of Julia Child, and the unique ways she chorkled, smoked, loved her diplomat husband, adored food and coped with her childlessness and freakish height. Sandra Bullock was great fun in Speed, awfully screen-hoggish since then, and she'll have to bowl me over in The Blind Side so completely that I'd allow her to defeat Ste Meryl. I'm prepared to apologise to her. Movie critics, like boy scouts, should always be prepared. Even for absurd situations.

I'm sure Ephron is a fiery liberal. She slips three anti-Republican jibes into Julia's conversations. Julia and her adorable husband (Stanley Tucci shining in a role of modest passivity) were clearly liberals in the old-world sense. They were American aristocrats, and Ephron couldn't help revering them. The Powells are nouveaux riches, who never talk about politics or anything other than themselves, and Nora Ephron didn't admire them half as much.