Babette’s Feast [Babettes gæstebud] ***** (1987, Stéphane Audran, Bodil Kjer, Birgitte Federspiel) Classic Movie Review 2438

Writer-director Gabriel Axel’s 1987 Danish movie won the 1988 Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award. It was a special triumph as it was the first Danish film to win the best foreign film Oscar. It also won the 1989 BAFTA Award for Best Film not in the English Language.

It turns Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen)’s novel Skaebne-Anekdoter with its simple heart-lifting fable into something as perfectly delicious as the meal to end all meals conjured up at its climax by the woman (Stéphane Audran) who is the French lottery-winner.

Fleeing from the aftermath of the Communard uprising, Babette Hersant (Audran) is taken on as cook for the two elderly Lutheran spinster sisters, Filippa and Martine (Bodil Kjer, Birgitte Federspiel), daughters of the late saintly dean, who befriend her in her Danish exile in god-fearing Jutland.

Now, 14 years later, instead of returning to Paris, she uses her 10,000-franc lottery money to repay them, by celebrating the 100th anniversary of the dean’s birth with Babette’s Feast.

This is a marvellous, magical and mouth-watering feast for the senses, gracefully filmed with a pungent atmosphere of 19th-century Denmark, and commandingly played by Audran and the others. Best advice, though is please don’t watch it on an empty stomach!

The original version is subtitled for English-language audiences. Allegedly, the favourite film of Pope Francis.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2438

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