Babette's Feast

A film set in a Danish coastal village. The nineteenth century. The village is small and devout. A pastor has two daughters. Martine and Philippa. Neither married when they were young. Their father would not allow it and both were given to his congregation. An officer had fallen in love with Martine. He left. A French opera singer gave Philippa lessons. He wanted to take her to Paris and she refused. Years pass. The father dies. The congregation has aged and shrunk. People are estranged and old scores are talked over. One night a woman comes to the door. Babette is French. There was a rising in Paris, her family is dead, and she has fled. She brings a letter from that singer. The two sisters take her in. Babette stays as a servant and asks for no wage. Fourteen years pass. She keeps renewing a lottery ticket. A friend in Paris buys it each year. One day it wins. Ten thousand francs. From there the film becomes a story about a meal. Babette wants something. To prepare a French dinner on the hundredth anniversary of the pastor's birth. The ingredients come by boat. A live turtle, quail, wine, cheese. The congregation is frightened. They think the meal a sin and decide to taste nothing. The meal is eaten. What the narrative is interested in is not food but return: its idea is that Babette spends all her money on one evening and expects nothing back. Through the meal the people change. The estrangements dissolve, old things are said, and a softening comes over the table. At the end Babette says who she is. She was the chef of a famous restaurant in Paris. The source is Karen Blixen's story. The film won the foreign language film Oscar; it was the first Danish film to do so. Gabriel Axel directed. Stéphane Audran, Bodil Kjer, Birgitte Federspiel and Jarl Kulle are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes quiet European cinema and slow narrative. Who it is not for: anyone expecting incident; the first half is entirely the past and the meal itself begins in the last forty minutes.