Eat Pray Love, both the book and the film, inspires a “how dare she” ire. The book by Elizabeth Gilbert is portrayed in some outlets such as bitchmagazine.org (search “priv-lit”) as the crime scene of some unforgivable transgression of gauche privilege. Now it is a lush, inviting, Julia Roberts movie about an enviable if outlandish quest across Italy, India and Bali for self-fulfillment, a meditation on the elusiveness of personal happiness and a sexy romantic fantasy featuring Javier Bardem. When the whole Eat Pray Love phenomenon isn’t booked as the class-bias crime of the century, it is suspected to be an insidious hypnotic induction because women who also like Oprah like it. Critics want to prove to you that your enjoyment of this work is misguided. It is not and do not apologize for it.
This article appears in Aug 19-25, 2010.
