Rachel Portman on Cooking Up a Souffle of a Score for Julia Child Documentary
Jon Burlingame editorOscar winner Rachel Portman (“Emma”) served up a delightful score for “Julia,” the documentary about cooking personality Julia Child from “RBG” filmmakers Betsy West and Julie Cohen.Curiously, the English composer had never seen Child’s public TV series “The French Chef” and, although she loves to cook, does not own Child’s classic book “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.”Portman, who recently received a lifetime achievement award from Germany’s SoundTrack Cologne, spoke with Variety about “Julia.”How did “Julia” come to you?It helped that I had written the music for “Chocolat” [Lasse Hallstrom’s 2000 film about a chocolatiere in 1959 France] – the whole thing about food, and music, and France.