Babettes gæstebud

The 1987 Oscar winner for Best Foreign Film is an austere but ultimately joyous fable set on a desolate spit of coastline in northern Denmark, where for sustenance the puritan townsfolk rely first on prayer and afterwards on their daily ration of a thin, brown gruel made from soggy bread crusts and dehydrated flounder. But all that changes with the arrival from Paris of an attractive refugee (the story takes place during the French Revolution) who thanks her benefactors, and tests their strict religious principles, by preparing a sinfully delicious gourmet feast for the entire town. The meal is more than enough to tempt even the most devout ascetic, but of course the dour villagers do their best to look as if they're not enjoying each luxurious mouthful. It's rare these days to find a film so unafraid of simple virtues, without even a trace of malice or cynicism to spoil its bittersweet charm. In the end the gap dividing the villagers' spiritual and earthly appetites is happily bridged, proving again that few things (except perhaps a good movie) are as life embracing as a hearty meal.

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.

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.

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.

If you find the first 30 minutes of this film to be so slow that you wonder why you're watching it, don't give up. Also, hearing the Danish language is a bit new to most North Americans, who don't see and hear a lot of Danish films. Anyway, as the film progressed it got better and better and the viewer is rewarded for his/her patience.

Being a fan of the movie, "Out Of Africa," this film piqued my interest because it's based on a short novel by Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen), the major character in that film.

The meal - Babette's feast - was amazing. I'm no chef, but I was impressed! How one interprets the story, too, varies, I suppose depending on how much you read into this, and where you stand religion-wise. If the latter, how you look at the definition of "legalism" can affect how you interpret this story.

In any case, it's a fine film, but don't watch this if you're dieting.