Here is a celebratory documentary that takes for granted throughout that its audience is already hugely invested in its subject: the American TV chef and larger-than-life personality Julia Child. She is sufficiently legendary in the United States to have rated a biopic impersonation by Meryl Streep in the 2009 film Julie & Julia and also by Britain’s Sarah Lancashire in the recent HBO TV series Julia (alongside an otherwise largely American cast). Added to which, Dan Aykroyd once did a Julia Child sketch on Saturday Night Live and David Cross in the TV comedy Arrested Development did a whooping Julia Child voice when he dressed up as a Mrs Doubtfire nanny.
As for this documentary, it’s a professionally made film with reasonable things to say about the birth of TV celebrity chef culture, challenging male dominance in the professional kitchen and Child’s role in promoting the pre-eminence of French cuisine among America’s emerging food-literate middle classes. But just as with that Meryl Streep movie, I found myself restless at the parochiality of this American icon, although the film does briefly ponder the French public’s lack of interest in her.
