When she first became a television star in 1963, star of a small Boston station with which she would soon make history, Julia Child, then co-author of a recipe book published by the renowned Knopf – and Judith Jones, the editor of other stars like John Updike and Jean Paul Sartre – was 51 years old. She was a very tall woman – she couldn't join the armed forces during the Second World War because she was too tall: she was about six feet tall – and seemed to exaggerate herself all the time – she was her own modest , passionate work Marsch – and that, knowing he was a force of nature and an artist in the kitchen, he would not easily dissolve into a suburban life.
In her first brilliant and perfect season, Julia (HBO) recomposed the character of this pioneer not only of the television formula but also of the idea of television – she was pure television without ever having seen television – and the unstoppable ambition that she had arises from the desire to be seen. And he did it without eschewing everything the character faced at the time, starting with the editorial scorn – for a label like Knopf to have a cookbook make it through to a future National Book Award was unacceptable; it couldn't understand the magnitude of it retrace the revolution that meant teaching the United States to cook and eat with pleasure and for pleasure – and the rampant machismo that tried to exclude and belittle them, without ever succeeding.
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The instant success of “The French Chef,” “our little show,” as Child called it — and which she paid for, convinced it was the son she never had, and here's something important from that first season , from which she doesn't shy away from anything, but which understands like no other series, has the psychological imprint of menopause, the tip of an iceberg that is a pure social construct, but a painful and paralyzing one – brought her all kinds of envy Head-on collision with the feminism of the time. . An accident that almost knocked the giant child over at a dinner where he crossed paths with Betty Friedan. The author of The Feminine Mystique blamed the chef for bringing women back into the kitchen with her program, and Child saw herself as something of a villain.
Actress Sarah Lancashire plays the role of Julia Child in Julia. HBO MAX
But it never was. Because her intention was only about what she was passionate about and exactly what Friedan herself preached in order to be definitely seen and understood for what she was: an artist, in her case, of the kitchen. Sarah Lancashire's (Happy Valley) performance is so outstanding – and singing, it wasn't easy to talk or act like Child, since she was a kind of clown of herself, an overwhelmingly charming caricature – that it seems like a trifle works wonders. The tandem she forms with David Hyde Pierce – her husband, Paul Child – is another example, and one that also serves to create what is probably the healthiest relationship ever seen in television fiction based on something real.
Here, Fiona Glascott, in her role as Judith Jones, perhaps comes closest to describing what it means to tell the story on television, what it means to be an editor – the infinity of the manuscripts you have to carry, the impossibility of living a life, that never ends is invaded by the immeasurable egos of its writers – which becomes even more apparent in a second season in which Child becomes the epicenter of a juicy feast of characters – all those who surrounded them – and a reflection on the consequences of success and exposure will be the height of McCarthyism. Do not miss.
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