Criterion Club: Babette's Feast with John Anzalone

Criterion Club is back, kicking off a mini-series devoted to movies about food, to leaven the dark bread of winter....debuting with the delicious Babette's Feast.

Babette’s Feast (1987)
1871: Into the harsh climate of a remote island off the Jutland coast of Denmark, comes Babette Hersant, Parisian fleeing the violent putdown of the insurrectionists of the Paris commune. She seeks refuge and brings a note of introduction from a singer of the Paris Opera to Martine and Filippa, two elderly sisters. He was once Filippa’s suitor but both sisters had rejected offers of marriage years earlier because their domineering father insisted on keeping them as assistants to his austere Lutheran sect that forgoes earthly pleasures. The small, pious church he established has shrunk to a small number of villagers, all of them elderly, several of them nursing old grievances.
The sisters accept Babette but cannot pay her, so she works for them for room and board as a housekeeper, maid and a cook. For over 10 years she prepares only food of the most mundane sort since for the sect, all pleasure is suspect. One day news comes from Paris that Babette has hit the lottery. In thanks for her acceptance by the community, she offers to cook for them a celebratory meal, with ingredients shipped from France. And then the world goes sideways!
One of the great movies exalting how the power of food prepared with love can transform life, Babette’s Feast was the first Danish movie to win the Oscar for best foreign film. It stars Stéphane Audran, the beautiful lead in the early new wave films of Claude Chabrol, as Babette.
This film will delight you from the appetizers to the deserts. It also a celebration of the beauty of life’s surprises.

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