Set Decorator: Susan Bode

I LOVE watching Julie and Julia (dir. by Nora Ephron, 2009).  It is so beautiful, and Meryl Streep's laughing face is so delightful that I could watch this one with or without sound and still fall in love with it a little bit more.

I researched the set decorator, because the visual environments are so important to setting the tone of this movie, and found out that it was Susan Bode (or Bode-Tyson, depending on the year), the set decorator for You've Got Mail (which explains why J&J looks so good).

All of Child's homes in the movie are very romantic and pristine.  I think that is in part because the main character, Julie, idolizes Julia Childs so much (as the perfect cook and the perfect woman).  Julia's living spaces being very romantic maintains the illusion of her perfection.  But it's mostly the more realistic environment, Julie's modern-day apartment, that speak to my modern sensibilities of beauty.

Her apartment symbolizes the need to make something beautiful with what you have.  Resourcefulness.  The use of airy, antique-looking textiles in a dumpy apartment represents her longing to make something lovely happen (her quest to complete all of the recipes in Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" in one year) in the middle of something mundane (her life as a government secretary).

This longing is something I connect with, having been raised on Nora Ephron and other romantic movies that make an average girl's story into something picturesque (note to self: mention something about the "male gaze" right here).  I think most people look for importance in their own life story.  Nobody really wants to be a faceless extra in someone else's life; we want our ordinary story to be dressed up and made meaningful and significant.  I think this is the main point that the movie is trying to drive home, and what I love about set decoration is that it is a visual language that can be used to support the points that a movie is trying to make (along with costumes and other things).

You could accuse me of being an entitled white girl at this point, who thinks that her life means more than it does, but I think the search for meaning and validation is pretty universal.

Anyways, take a look at some of Bode's carefully crafted sets that come off as pretty nonchalant and lived-in in the end, in Julie and Julia.