El festín de Babette

This delicately told and moving story about the two devout daughters of a Danish Lutheran minister and their French servant is one of the finest European films of the 1980s. Set in a small, remote, austere Danish seaside town in the mid-19th century, the daughters devote their lives to continuing the work of their father in service of God, and in care for their needy townspeople. One of the daughters had turned down a promising opera career -- and the love of her French voice coach (a famous opera singer himself) -- to remain with her father and the town. Many years later the French singer sends a woman (Babette) -- who had lost her family in an outbreak of civil war -- to live with the sisters. She turns out to be an excellent cook, housekeeper and a shrewd shopper. The story culminates in a sumptuous feast prepared by Babette coinciding with a memorial to the reverend minister's 100th birthday. This delicious screenplay was adapted from the Isak Denisson (pen name for Karen Blixen) short story originally published in the Ladies Home Journal.

"Babette's Feast" proves that not all film theories and formulas are true 100% of the time. Here's a story where there is no life-or-death conflict, no raging anger, no violent outbursts. Nothing blowed up real good, and there is nothing resembling a chase scene. The conflict is about the ways in which people can be nice to each other. Their personal differences of passion or conviction are not as important as the ways in which they can connect with each other.

How shockingly refreshing.

There is an undercurrent to this film that gives it the feel of a Garrison Keillor monologue, in that it is built around people's personal foibles and quirks.

Even more refreshing is how "Babette's Feast" manages to be nice without becoming cloying, saccharine, facile, superficial or insincere. People's personal passions are portrayed not only from their own perspective, but from the perspective of the people they affect, with more realism than you usually get in film, yet also with sincere and infectious optimism.

If you don't come away from "Babette's Feast" smiling and feeling better, then you must have been distracted from giving it your full attention. This is one of those very rare films that you can recommend to everyone you know. It is truly in a class by itself. Like Mary Poppins, "Practically perfect in every way."

Utterly charming and subtly stunning.

It has started quietly. If your are looking for an action-packed movie this is absolutely not the right choice. All characters are slowly depicted on the scene. Stroke after stroke on the scene canvas. None can take away his hands to the priest and so the sisters lifespan devotion can only remain into the village. Philippa and Martina know their destiny, belong only to the village. So when you understand that, you are on the movie scene, in the village that becomes the whole known world in that time. When, no technology can let you imagine anything else than the campaign, the village, the sea. You feel the rhythm of that ancient village's life. Watching the movie in a cold snowy late afternoon can cause you to approach this evening dinner with some sumptuous expectations ...

The final sentence that give a title to Babette's sacrifice far from Paris: An artist is never poor.

Superb photography. Many situations depict portraits and landscapes as they were styled on canvas there, in Jutland, in 18th century.

One evening when I was working in the lab, I developed this intense pang of hunger. I decided to go downstairs to the cafeteria and scrap together a dinner when I noticed a few random folk gathered in front of the adjacent theater. Since the building was usually empty by that hour I couldn't help feeling curious and since I always eavesdrop on conversations I soon discovered that they were showing old films in the theater. So, I bought a few vendor snacks and decided to join them for a viewing. That was one of the best work related decisions I ever made as an undergrad. That movie made me reconsider my second shift job at the lab and check out enrollment into the local culinary art schools. Well, I didn't become a chef but I did abandon biology for a more creative outlet and realized that being home before dinner is an important part of better living. Babette's Feast - a movie that had me reevaluate my life and consider a career change. How many flicks do that? Best movie ever.

Stephane Audran is the eponymous heroine of this beautifully measured study of a small Danish community towards the end of the last century. Two beautiful and musically talented sisters give-up their own prospects of happiness and marriage in order to look-after their ageing father. One day, a French woman, Babette, comes to work for them. After some years she wins the lottery and is determined to do something for the sisters who have taken her in. Her solution is to prepare an exquisite and sumptuous feast, which changes the lives of all those invited. This is a film about human and cultural interaction, reflected in the changing language of the dialogue from Danish to French, and especially between the dutiful sobriety of Protestant northern Europe and the sensuousness of the Catholic south. It is also about human needs, and how warmth and kindness can be expressed and stimulated through the cultivation of the senses. A profoundly uplifting film.