Director and screenwriter Nora Ephron, best known for writing "Sleepless in Seattle", brings together culinary queens from different generations in "Julie and Julia." - iconic U.S chef Julia Child and her modern-day disciple Julie Powell.

Meryl Streep stars as Julia Child in 'Julie and Julia'.

The film centres on publications by both women: "My life in France" is Child’s autobiography, chronicling the beginnings of her journey into cooking and writing the bestselling book "Mastering the art of French Cooking."

"Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen," is 30-year-old New Yorker Julie Powell's compendium of blogs about working her way through all the recipes in Child’s classic cookbook while holding down a steady job.

Much like Child’s signature recipe for potato dauphinois, the film delivers overlapping layers, dividing the action between the lives of the two women. Ephron doesn't try to set up the two women as equals, as there is doubtless a discrepancy between their achievements. Instead, the film offers an account of how Child’s example transformed, somewhat unexpectedly, the life of a woman born more almost seventy years later.

It is a rehabilitation of sorts for Child, whom I had easily dismissed during my college years as a relic from an age of unemancipated femininity. Just as Child’s story pulled Julie into a whirlwind of cooking and writing, the film "Julie & Julia" took me on a journey into the life of a 20th century American icon.

As a young girl, I felt trapped between my mother’s liberal American values and my conservative Greek father’s beliefs at the other end. Even though my mother was and is culinary star, I spent most of my youth avoiding the kitchen, a space I associated with female subjugation.

So, when I began my studies at Smith College in Massachusetts - an independent liberal arts college for women whose famous alumnae span the political spectrum from first ladies Nancy Reagan and Barbara Bush to influential feminists like Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan as well as Child - I found myself looking for role models that appeared more subversive.

This, in spite of the fact that just one year before I began my freshman year Julia was still cooking on air aged 84. Even though Julia’s name seemed to emerge and remerge on campus, I never thought more about her accomplishments. Hers was a story I preferred to escape than pursue.

Watching Nora Ephron’s film changed this and became the trigger that led me on my own journey to explore Child’s uncompromising and fearless character. After watching Ephrons’ film I realized that Julia worked hard to overcome obstacles and pursue her two creative passions: cooking and writing.

I also realized that Child is not that different from many of the women I already admired. She pushed her way into the elite Cordon Bleu cooking school with little knowledge of French at a time when the majority of chefs worldwide were male.

Julia Child saw her life as a work in progress: she presented the first live cooking show in America, "The French Chef" in 1963, aged 50, wrote eight cookbooks and presented TV specials well into the 1990s when she was in her eighth decade.

In researching Julia Child’s life, I turned to other Smith alum Gail Wescott who interviewed Child as she was moving out of her Massachusetts home to live the last chapter of her life in assisted living center close to Los Angeles.

Wescott remembers her interviewee aged 90 telling her that she STILL had one book in her and it was going to be the memoir of her life in France with her loving husband Paul. (This book was later published as "My Life in France," co-written with her grandnephew Alex Prud’ homme.)

Wescott told me, "In this moment, Julia Child became a role model well beyond her iconic culinary achievements. She was someone about to enter her 90s who was still totally engaged with life, who still had another story she wanted to tell."