Julia opens to the raucous, back-and-forth guitar licks of Jimi Hendrix’s “Fire” — a decidedly unanticipated and seemingly outside-the-box choice for co-directors Julie Cohen and Betsy West’s genial nonfiction assaying of author and celebrity chef Julia Child, which otherwise trades largely in traditional rhythms, and unfolds in expected ways. But then again, maybe, given its lyrical evocation of “only one burning desire,” it appropriately captures the singular passion of its subject.

Fresh off its complementary presentations at the Telluride Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival, Julia generously sketches out the life story of Child, and how with her 1961 cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking, its subsequent iterations, and, of course, her popular television cooking show The French Chef, she refashioned the American culinary scene. Pleasant throughout, it’s an engaging tale of unlikely fame arrived at late in life.

Julia has a somewhat unusual pedigree for a documentary (it’s “inspired by” two separate books and also “based on” a third, one of those from Child’s great-nephew Alex Prud’homme) and it’s perhaps this paying of many pipers which contributes to an occasional creeping feeling of checklist inclusion with a couple of the interviewees, of various corporate donors, being dutifully thanked before a reception. Still, the film clocks in at a brisk, viewer-friendly 95 minutes, abetted by a score from Rachel Portman which keeps things moving, and smart, incisive editing choices from Carla Gutierrez that trim the story and beats down to their essences.

Renowned chefs like José Andrés, Marcus Samuelsson, Ina Garten, and others lend voice to the groundbreaking nature of Child’s work. They talk about how her best-selling book, published by Alfred A. Knopf, after being dropped by Houghton Mifflin, instilled kitchen confidence in millions of Americans and helped spark a turn away from television dinners of the 1950s. Meanwhile, Cohen and West, who broke through in 2018 with the Oscar-nominated and Emmy Award-winning RBG, do a good job of surveying the WASP-y existence of young Julia McWilliams (a well-off childhood in Pasadena, followed by graduation from Smith College with an expectation that she would return to conservative social circles) and contrasting it with the professional reward she found first as a copywriter and then a typist and researcher for the Office of Strategic Services, a forerunner to the Central Intelligence Agency.

In large part, though, Julia is grounded in a love story which seems equal parts fairytale and ahead-of-its-time equal partnership. Julia would meet Paul Child, a polymath civil servant 10 years her senior, while stationed in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), and their marriage would span almost five decades, until his death in 1994. Absorbing her husband’s general love and appreciation of food, Child would become obsessed during a stationing in Paris with French cuisine. Her life’s passion from that point forward would become demystifying the cooking process for average American households.

The narrative spine of this doting relationship, as well as other significant parts of Cohen and West’s film (including Child’s enrollment at Le Cordon Bleu with a bunch of men studying on the French equivalent of the GI Bill), will ring familiar for anyone who saw 2009’s Julie & Julia. But the movie also does a good job of locating little details, fleshing out both Child’s principles (her advocacy for Planned Parenthood, refusing to take product placement or endorsement deals) and sense of humor (yes, she was a fan of Dan Aykroyd’s famous Saturday Night Live sketch, which receives showcase and further contextualization here).

Set for a November theatrical release from Sony Pictures Classics, it’s easy to see Julia catching on with audiences nostalgic about her home-cooked recipes, and many families looking to perhaps (knock on wood, if vaccinations can be boosted and COVID infection totals suppressed) convene for their first in-person holiday gatherings in quite some time. There’s nothing much about Cohen and West’s warm biopic treatment that will disappoint viewers who are either already fans of or just curious about this remarkable woman. And one of Child’s biggest lessons for adults, about not being afraid of failure, and leaning into that which makes you a bit uncomfortable, is an especially welcome one in these tumultuous times.