31 Movies of May, Day 26: Babette's Feast

May 26th viewing: Babette’s Feast, chosen by Chicago Cinema Workers’ Fund donor and my aunt-in-law, Amy Goldstein. Amy also donated extra money to have me take a shot of xxx before the screening, which tasted like that bread soup Filippa and Martine make, after it had sat out on the counter for about a week.

Year of Release: 1987

Directed by: Gabriel Axel

Written by: Gabriel Axel (based on the short story by Karen Blixen)

Starring: Stephanie Audran, Bodil Kjer, Birgitte Federspiel, Jarl Kulle, Jean-Philippe Lafont, Vibeke Hastrup, Hanne Stensgaard, Pouel Kern

Accompanying Beverage of Choice: Totally Roasted (Cider, 6.8% ABV), Vander Mill Cider, Grand Rapids, Michigan
(Support Independent Breweries *and Cideries* - buy local when getting buzzed during quarantine)

At some point during my viewing of Babette’s Feast, I wrote down the note, “Danes: the normcore champions of Scandinavia?”

I’m really not sure exactly what I meant by this note when I scribbled it down, but even if the observation itself is rather… dubious, I feel it does capture some of the feeling and spirit of the movie. Babette’s Feast is one of the lovelier cinematic depictions of people gaining a heightened appreciation for culture through experience, and that doesn’t work if the film doesn’t go through the labor of establishing most of our characters - other than the eponymous outsider Babette - as squares.

The film takes place in an isolated seaside village in Denmark, where life revolves around a small religious order led by sisters Filippa and Martine. The order follows the teachings of Filippa and Martine’s father, who preached humbleness and coached his daughters and parishioners to live lives largely free of pleasure. Fortunately, he also preached charity, which leads Filippa and Martine one day to take in Babette, a French refugee fleeing the persecution of the Paris Commune. Years later, after receiving a financial windfall, Babette offers to make a grand French dinner for the sisters and the members of their church, leading to apprehension from the townsfolk as they fear the bizarre and unfamiliar creations Babette may force upon their palette. 

This framing is delightfully inverted for American audiences. The ways of Martine, Filippa and their village are probably more foreign to us than those of the Parisian Babette - perhaps most of all, the bread and ale soup that forms the staple of their diet looks wildly unappetizing. And to modern audiences, French cooking is not only considered mainstream, but often depicted as the height of cuisine. Yet here, every step Babette takes as she prepares the dinner is depicted with an orientalist lens, as some foreign custom that makes no sense. The townspeople are the “normal” ones while all of Babette’s practices are unfamiliar. When she accepts a shipment of ingredients from France, one of the foregrounded items is a live sea turtle, which awkwardly stares at passers by as it is wheeled to Babette’s kitchen. Everything Babette does is looked upon quizzically by the townspeople. She uses terminology that these people have never heard before and they don’t dare ask them to be defined - when served champagne, one of the dinner guests remarks, “It must be some kind of lemonade.”

Of course, the place to flip the script on French cooking would be Scandinavia, the home of bland delicacies such as lutefisk and pickled herring. I grew up in a family descended from Norwegians, and other than Christmas dinners with Swedish meatballs and lefse, Scandinavian food was really not part of our dietary picture. My grandmother has, on occasion, eaten lutefisk, but she has never had the temerity to subject her grandchildren to it (or, more likely than not, she simply didn’t want her house to smell like lye-soaked cod for days).

That food background makes it all the more wonderful to see the townspeople ultimately fall in love with Babette’s food. As they come to appreciate each course, so do we, even though we already know that champagne and foie gras taste good. It’s rare to find a film that not only manages to produce good art on its own, but also captures the feeling of appreciating that art. Considering the apprehension most American audiences still hold toward subtitled cinema, Babette’s Feast could serve not only as a great evening for audiences, but as an instructional video as well.