We've barely gotten to meet these folk before the quiet, relaxed narrator (Ghita Nørby) takes us back several decades, to 1836, when the pastor (Pouel Kern) still reigns in town, aided by his lovely young daughters Martine (Vibeke Hastrup) and Philippa (Hanne Stensgaard). The film opens with a brief look inside the lives of a small community of strict Protestants (theoretically Lutherans, though a frightfully unyielding strain of Lutheranism if so), good-natured, happy people whose numbers are dwindling in the years after the death of the charismatic pastor who breathed life into this barren fishing village in the wastes on the Jutland coast. It's rather to tricky say what is is about, in fact, other than itself. In truth, the film is not 'about' Babette's feast, however, nor even necessarily about Babette. Also, it is one of the most wholly successful food porn movies outside of Ratatouille, and I'm not going to pretend that I don't have a huge weakness for food porn. Some of which have aged not at all but Babette's Feast, while unapologetically middlebrow, remains incredibly likable, soothing, and honest. One of those mainstream foreign movies that used to be able to make it huge in English-speaking countries because they were both unchallenging and good/not great in pretty much every manner of their creation, you know the ones. That is the last time I shall mention Out of Africa in comparison to Babette's Feast, for while the American film is prestigious and pokey and fricking dull, the Danish picture is charming and winsome and intensely pleasant. Remember after Out of Africa came out, how there was that huge Karen Blixen fad at the movies? Everybody trying to get a piece of that Blixen magic, and you could hardly walk into a multiplex without seeing three or four films based on her writing? No? Probably because it didn't actually happen: there were only two Blixen adaptations to come out in the next decade, both Danish: the hugely obscure TV movie Sorgagre, and the Oscar-winning costume drama Babette's Feast, but since both of those came out in 1987, the filthy cynic in me can't help but assume that Out of Africa helped serve as, let us say, an 'inspiration' to the filmmakers.

My thanks to him for letting me cover my ass. Chris Walters included a list of possible reviews along with his Carry On Campaign donation, and I used the excuse to fill one of the more embarrassing holes in my film viewing history.

Babette's feast karen blixen