Babette's Feast () is a 1987 Danish drama film directed by Gabriel Axel. The screenplay, written by Axel, was based on the 1958 story by Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen). It was produced by Just Betzer, Bo Christensen and Benni Korzen, with funding from the Danish Film Institute. It stars Stéphane Audran, Birgitte Federspiel, and Bodil Kjer.

Babette's Feast was met with widespread critical acclaim and became the first Danish film to win the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. It was also the first Danish cinema film of a Blixen story.

The film premiered in the Un Certain Regard section of the 1987 Cannes Film Festival.

Plot

The elderly and pious Protestant sisters Martine and Filippa live in a small village on the remote western coast of Jutland in 19th-century Denmark. Their late father was a pastor who founded his own Pietistic conventicle. Lacking new converts, the aging sisters preside over a dwindling, elderly congregation.

Forty-nine years before, the sisters had many suitors, but their father rejected them, to retain the women’s assistance with his pastoral mission. Martine was courted by a young Swedish cavalry officer, Lorens Löwenhielm, who was visiting Jutland. Filippa was courted by the famous baritone Achille Papin, on hiatus from the Paris Opera. Both sisters spurned their suitors and stayed with their father.

Thirty-five years later, Babette Hersant appears at their door. She carries a letter from Papin which explains that she is a refugee from counter-revolutionary bloodshed in Paris and recommends her as a housekeeper. The sisters cannot afford to employ Babette, but she begs to work for free. Babette serves as their cook for the next fourteen years, producing improved versions of the bland meals typical of the abstemious nature of the congregation and gaining their respect, and that of the other locals. As the years go by, the sisters are deeply distressed by the increasing number of disputes between the congregants. Babette is also troubled, and at one point, interrupts the arguments with a stern rebuke.

Babette's only link to her former life is a lottery ticket. A Parisian friend annually renews the ticket. One day, she wins the lottery and receives 10,000 francs. After her win she decides to prepare a dinner for the sisters and their small congregation on the occasion of the founding pastor's hundredth birthday. More than just a feast, the meal is an outpouring of Babette's appreciation, an act of self-sacrifice.

The sisters accept both Babette's meal and her offer to pay for the creation of a "real French dinner." Babette arranges for her nephew to go to Paris and gather the supplies for the feast. The ingredients are plentiful, sumptuous and exotic, and their arrival causes much consternation and discussion among the villagers. As the various never-before-seen ingredients arrive and preparations commence, the sisters begin to worry that the meal will become a sin of sensual luxury, if not some form of devilry. In a hasty conference, the sisters and the congregation agree to eat the meal, but to forgo speaking of any pleasure in it and to make no mention of the food during the dinner.

Martine's former suitor, Lorens, now a famous general married to a member of the entourage of Queen Louise, comes as the guest of his aunt, the local lady of the manor and a member of the old pastor's congregation. He is unaware of the other guests' austere plans and as a man of the world and former attaché in Paris, he is the only person at the table qualified to comment on the meal. He regales the guests with abundant information about the extraordinary food and drink, comparing it to a meal he enjoyed years earlier at the famous Café Anglais in Paris. Although the other celebrants refuse to comment on the earthly pleasures of their meal, Babette's gifts break down their distrust and superstitions, elevating them physically and spiritually. Old wrongs are forgiven, ancient loves are rekindled and a mystical redemption of the human spirit settles over the table.

Bereft, the sisters assume that Babette will return to Paris. However, when she says that all of her money is gone and that she is not going anywhere, the sisters are aghast. Babette then reveals that she was formerly the head chef of the Café Anglais, where a dinner for twelve cost 10,000 francs. Martine tearfully says, "Now you will be poor the rest of your life", to which Babette replies, "An artist is never poor." Filippa then says: "But this is not the end, Babette. In paradise you will be the great artist God meant you to be" and then embraces her with tears in her eyes saying: "Oh, how you will enchant the angels!"

Cast

  • Stéphane Audran as Babette Hersant
  • Bodil Kjer as Filippa (old)
  • Birgitte Federspiel as Martine (old)
  • Jarl Kulle as General Lorens Löwenhielm (old)
  • Jean-Philippe Lafont as Achille Papin
  • Vibeke Hastrup as Martine (young)
  • Hanne Stensgaard as Filippa (young)
  • Tina Kiberg as Filippa (singing voice)
  • Gudmar Wivesson as Lorens Löwenhielm (young)
  • Bibi Andersson as Swedish courtier
  • Pouel Kern as the pastor, the father
  • Bendt Rothe as Nielsen, parishioner
  • Cay Kristiansen as Poul, parishioner
  • Lisbeth Movin as the Widow, parishioner
  • Preben Lerdorff Rye as the Captain, parishioner
  • Ebbe Rode as Christopher, parishioner
  • Else Petersen as Solveig, parishioner
  • Asta Esper Andersen as Anna, parishioner
  • Holger Perfort as Karlsen, parishioner
  • Ebba With as Löwenhielm's aunt
  • Axel Strøbye as Löwenhielm's coachman
  • Finn Nielsen as grocery store owner
  • Ghita Nørby as Narrator (voice)

Production

Blixen's original story takes place in a Norwegian village called Berlevåg, which coincidentally shares its name with the port village of Berlevåg, which has multi-coloured wooden houses on a long fjord. However, when Axel researched locations in Norway, he found the settings were too idyllic and resembled a "beautiful tourist brochure". He shifted the location to the flat windswept coast of western Jutland and asked his set designer, Sven Wichmann, to build a small grey village offering very few or no attractions. Mårup Church, a plain Romanesque church built around 1250 on a remote seaside cliff near the village of Lønstrup, was used as a backdrop. Somewhat ironically, the actual village of Berlevåg is not on a fjord, but directly on the Barents Sea, and is subject to strong winds—very much similar to Axel's vision.

Axel altered the setting from a ship-filled harbor to fishermen's rowboats on a beach. He said the changes would highlight Blixen's vision of Babette's life in near complete exile.