Julie and Julia / Movies could use more gratuitous food scenes. The image of a skilled hand rhythmically working its way through supple vegetables, grill marks searing into raw steak, the steam rising from a plated dish as it’s being sauced–the cinematic pleasures of food are at least as arousing as heavy breathing on satin sheets. For a good food movie, pleasure and agony are intertwined–pleasure from the visual feast and agony from the rumblings of an empty stomach.

A recent advance screening of Julie and Julia (poised to be the foodie flick of the year, though I’d nominate Food, Inc.) had everyone in the theater craving boeuf bourguignon, hot weather be damned. As much as I enjoy seeing a global icon forced into a parallel story arc to a ‘blook’ (book based on a blog) author, for me, the film didn’t match up with some of the greats. But to tide you over until you can decide for yourself, here are some favorite food movies for rent and food pairings to satiate the hunger that will inevitably follow.

Eat Drink Man Woman

In this movie from Taiwan, Chef Chu (and the hands of several stand-in master chefs) scores, slices and juliennes his way through an opening scene that convinces you surgeons should trade their scalpels in for meat cleavers, preparing the Sunday meal to end all meals.

The romances of the three daughters serve as an entertaining distraction from the food in the movie; they’re merely a backdrop for preparations like the soup dumplings, delicately pleated into tiny plump packages, glistening pieces of caramelized, fatty pork and Chinese crepes made by smearing a ball of dough on a hot griddle, leaving just a paper-thin skin that’s peeled off with the fingers.

My clearest memory of the movie is of Chu blowing into a duck to separate the skin from the flesh (this is done, I later learned, so that when roasted, the layer of fat under the skin renders into the meat, resulting in a juicy duck with a crisp, browned skin). I watched Eat Drink Man Woman for the first time 15 years ago, and I’ve had an obsession with roast duck ever since. My own experiments blowing up a duck–alternating between CPR techniques and a bike pump–have been failures, and so I inevitably find myself back at Nam Fong, where I’ll pick the crispiest looking duck in the window.

Like Water for Chocolate

In this melodramatic Mexican film, Tita, a daughter suppressed by a tyrannical mother, sublimates all her passions and desires into her cooking. In a characteristic scene, Tita strips feathers off quails, trusses them and then bathes them in a sauce made with rose petals, pitaya (a cactus fruit) and honey, ground with a mortar and pestle. The finished dish sends her sister into a sexual awakening that results in a man on horseback carrying her away, naked. Green poblano chiles covered with a white walnut sauce and sprinkled with ruby red pomegranate seeds, served at a wedding feast, have a similar effect (though slightly subdued) on the guests.

But if you have no patience for de-feathering quails, or are unable to gather all the ingredients for the chile dish, a meal at your nearest Mexican restaurant will do. It’s probably best this way, for the sake of decency and because there aren’t enough men on horseback in Honolulu to rescue us all.

Mostly Martha

While the food prepared in Like Water for Chocolate serves as an outlet for Tita’s desires, in the German film, Mostly Martha, food and cooking are barriers to a perfectionist chef’s relationships. Martha’s prickly attitude rings true for all chefs who harbor an inner resentment when customers return a faultless dish. To customers who insist her foie gras not cooked enough, her steak too cooked, she mutters “like casting pearls to swine.” But while Martha is a bit rough around the edges, the quenelles on her lobster dish and the plating of her quail with sliced truffles are not.

The restaurant she heads in the movie is upscale Italian with some French touches and dishes, making a dinner at ‘Elua, with its dual French and Italian menus from Philippe Padovani and Donato Loperfido, respectively, the perfect pairing for Mostly Martha. But for a movie in which rapture is also held in a simple bowl of salted pasta sprinkled with parmesan cheese and a chiffonade of basil, dinner and a movie at home supplied with takeout from Donato’s more casual Basta Pasta also makes for the perfect food evening without the formality of a fine-dining restaurant.

Ratatouille

Who would have thought the most accurate depiction of kitchen life would spring from one that was entirely animated? And headlined by a rat, no less. But Pixar’s Ratatouille provides precisely that, and in the process celebrates the art and creativity of cooking like no other film.

Remy, the bi-pedal, misfit rat-protagonist, prepares soup, throwing in leeks, thyme, garlic, salt, potatoes, parsley and chervil (the stunning detail of Pixar’s animation makes easy identification of the ingredients) with the acrobatics and grace of a Cirque du Soleil performance. Convincingly selling a message that talent is not dicated by your lot in life and pulling off the most absurdly fantastical finale, Ratatouille is not just a good food movie, it’s a good movie, period.

Watching it immediately inspires one to cook, and there’s no more appropriate pairing than the reenactment of the layered, multi-colored ratatouille Remy serves at the movie’s climax. Though created by The French Laundry’s Thomas Keller, a consultant for this movie, the dish is simple for home cooks to prepare. Find Keller’s recipe by Googling “Confit Byaldi,” which describes his more refined version of a traditional ratatouille and take a cue from the movie–use a mandoline to slice the vegetables into thin, even rounds. Even more perfect, the dish can be left in the oven for about the duration of the movie, ready for the inevitable hungry mouths at its conclusion.

Trailer for Julie & Julia

Meryl Streep and Amy Adams take TV Guide behind the scenes of the movie.

Worth it just to see more clips of Meryl playing Julia.

---