Imogen and Joan are great friends, but they have separate lives. They met because Imogen writes a monthly column that Joan loves to read, so she write a fan letter to Imogen, sending her a recipe for the mussels that Imogen refuses to eat and some saffron she can use in the cooking. Imogen takes Joan’s suggestion and writes her back. Thus starts a friendship through letters that lasts through years and many life changes.
While these women don’t spend much time together in real life, they open their hearts, minds, and palettes to each other through these letters, and there is a lot of support, humor, and honesty in what these women choose to write to each other. I think this would make a beautiful movie of the importance of friendship. I think it would be best to have two alternating stories, showing first Imogen and then Joan, going back and forth from Washington to L.A. (or Mexico, as Joan travels a lot), showing lots of beautiful food.
This would be a film with the warmth and foodiness of Chef or Julie and Julia along with the drama of their lives and how they intersect. Reading it reminded me of reading Ruth Reichl’s Delicious!, which I also think would be a great film, although it’s really dense and I worry that my favorite part would need to get cut for time (that being the story line about James Beard). But Love & Saffron is a small book, so there is no worry about needing to cut it down. If anything, some of the scenes would probably need beefing up. But the emotional through line is lovely and will add so much depth and charm to the script.
my review of Love & Saffron
