Babettes Gaestebud
Gabriel Axel (1987)
The elderly sisters Martine (Birgitte Federspiel) and Filippa (Bodil Kjer) live in a fishing village on the coast of Jutland in northern Denmark. More than half a century ago, their father, a Lutheran pastor with rigid pietistic beliefs, founded a local conventicle whose numbers have dwindled with the passing decades. The pastor, though long dead, continues to influence his daughters’ lives. They still meet with the few other surviving and, like them, now white-haired members of the little sect. Although Martine and Filippa were both great beauties in their youth, neither has ever married: their father set little store by earthly pleasures or happiness and didn’t want to lose either daughter to another man. The only other member of their household now is their French housekeeper, Babette Hersant (Stéphane Audran), who arrived by boat at nearby Frederiskhavn in 1871, carrying with her a letter from the man who was once Filippa’s ardent suitor. The letter explains that Babette is a virtual refugee, who has lost her husband and only son in the bloody aftermath of the Paris Commune, and recommends her for domestic work. The sisters can’t afford to pay her a wage but Babette is happy to work for nothing more than a roof over her head. Her only remaining French connection, she tells Martine and Filippa shortly after moving in, is a lottery ticket, which an acquaintance renews annually on her behalf. Fourteen years later, a letter arrives from France for Babette, telling her she’s won a ten-thousand franc lottery prize. Her good fortune coincides with the hundredth anniversary of the pastor’s birth, which his daughters wish to celebrate. Babette has already transformed the sisters’ dreary, basic meals into something more palatable, not just for them but for the neighbouring poor whom they piously visit. The housekeeper now asks to prepare, as a gift to Marta and Filippa, ‘a proper French dinner’ to mark the pastor’s centenary.
The sisters and the other conventicle members who’ll be coming to the meal are strict teetotallers but Babette insists each course is accompanied by a suitable wine. To make matters worse, a boatload of exotic ingredients arrives from France, bearing with it the threat of sensual luxury. Marta and Filippa call a meeting of the prospective guests to discuss the crisis: it’s agreed that Babette should have a free hand with the menu but that the diners won’t take any pleasure in the meal and, indeed, will make no mention of food or drink for as long as they’re at table. The dinner is the climax to Babette’s Feast, which Gabriel Axel adapted from a short story of the same name by Isak Dinesen, alias Karen Blixen. Marta’s and Filippa’s apprehension about the feast was shared by this viewer, for reasons not dissimilar to theirs. There’ve already been references to abiding bones of contention between certain members of the conventicle. There looks to be a serious risk not just of newcomers to alcohol getting comically paralytic and hungover but also of tongues being loosened so that festering resentments break out into hilarious unchristian fisticuffs. Babette’s Feast is charming in several ways but the fact that the dinner turns out quite differently from what I feared really was a godsend, and lifted the film to another level. The banquet is a demonstration of what might be called in vino caritas. Long-standing resentments vanish. Loving feelings are confirmed or rediscovered. Each guest gets out of the meal what she or he needs to get out of it.
After introducing the sisters in old age, Gabriel Axel flashes back to their young womanhood. Marta (Vibeke Hastrup) is courted by Lorens Löwenhielm (Gudmar Wivesson[1]), a young Swedish cavalry officer, who is sent, in an attempt to mend his profligate ways, to stay with his stern, intimidating aunt (Ebba With), a member of the pastor’s flock. Löwenhielm and Marta are in love but he’s suffocated by the social and moral restrictions dictated by her father (Pouel Kern)’s regime. Although Löwenhielm doesn’t articulate this as his reason for doing so, he leaves Marta and the village, and heads back to Copenhagen to marry a lady-in-waiting (Bibi Andersson) of the Danish queen. The famous Paris Opera baritone Achille Papin (Jean-Philippe Lafont) is holidaying in Jutland when he hears singing from a church and goes inside. He’s bowled over by the beautiful voice of Filippa (Hanne Stensgaard). The pastor agrees – even though the Frenchman is ‘a Papist’ – to Filippa receiving singing lessons from him but Papin wants her as a prima donna personally as well as professionally. His infatuation makes Filippa uncomfortable and she breaks off contact with him, to her father’s evident satisfaction. The lovelorn Papin goes on his way, never to return to Jutland, but it’s he who writes from Paris many years later, as Babette’s referee.
Marta and Löwenhielm do meet again. He has enjoyed a successful military career – he’s now a general, as well as a respected member of the Danish royal court. The older Löwenhielm (Jarl Kulle) happens to be visiting his aunt again and accompanies her to the celebratory dinner, at which he’s a crucial guest. Unlike the others, he’s not bound to a vow of silence on the merits of the menu. Enraptured by each successive course, the general relates a story told to him, when he was a young soldier, by a senior officer, about a chef (‘A woman, strangely enough’) at the Café Anglais in Paris. The food this chef created was so magical, Löwenhielm says, that the enjoyment of it dissolved the distinction between ‘bodily appetite and spiritual appetite’. After their guests have gone and the sisters ask Babette how she learned to cook so well, she tells them she was once the chef at the Café Anglais.
Babette’s Feast was first published in a Karen Blixen collection called Anecdotes of Destiny: as the above synopsis makes clear, fate trumps probability in the story, which Gabriel Axel described, in an interview with Sight and Sound (Spring 1988) as ‘a fairy tale’. In doing so, Axel was evidently at pains to deter ‘over-explanation’ and ‘dissection’ of his film but the fairytale label sells his achievement short (and fairytales are hardly exempt from symbolic interpretation anyway). The dinner is an emotionally rich occasion not only because of the burgeoning benevolence round the table but also because – for Marta, Filippa, Babette and Löwenhielm at least – the occasion is infused with regret too. ‘Vanity of vanities; all is vanity,’ Löwenhielm pronounces gloomily, as he dresses for dinner and confronts his younger self, regarding him from an armchair on the other side of the room. The general is unduly pessimistic – the transports of the meal and the pleasure of the company are genuinely ameliorating – but Löwenhielm still knows that he might have had a different and happier life if he’d spent it with Marta. This time he at least is able to express that in what he says to her, as he takes his leave. Marta doesn’t even have to speak – her eyes convey a potent sense of what-might-have-been; her sister needs only sing briefly to do the same. (Filippa’s beautiful voice is supplied by the soprano Tina Kiberg.) Babette’s culinary triumph is counterbalanced by her look of deep nostalgia as she takes sips of red wine in the kitchen.
At times, Gabriel Axel encourages amused condescension from his audience – a weren’t-people-funny-in-those-days reaction – but the acting, though often broad, is very enjoyable. On her first appearance in the sisters’ humble parlour, Stéphane Audran may be the most elegantly charismatic screen housekeeper you’ve ever seen but she soon settles into a performance of fine discipline and dignity. Birgitte Federspiel and Bodil Kjer, and the actresses playing the younger Marta and Filippa, are eloquent and touching. Jarl Kulle, best known for his work in Bergman films, is witty and greatly entertaining as General Löwenhielm. (Another Bergman star, Bibi Andersson, is uncharacteristically arch in her cameo as Löwenhielm’s wife.) The pastor’s portrait on the wall watches and judges throughout – the sense of his enduring presence is reinforced by the strong impression Pouel Kern makes in his brief time on screen. Especially memorable is the contrast between the pastor’s impassive face and the flaring reprimand in his eyes when Babette’s hapless predecessor, the housemaid Martha (Therese Hojgaard), drops a tray of tea things at a gathering of the conventicle. Ghita Nørby reads the voiceover narrative, which Axel uses extensively.
At the end of the evening, Babette tells Marta and Filippa she won’t be going back to France as they’d feared she would. The cook, having spent her entire lottery winnings on preparations for the feast, has no funds to return with; besides, there’s no one to return to. The sisters are shocked that no expense was spared but the dry-eyed Babette assures them that it’s the lot of the artist to give her all and that, provided she does, ‘an artist can never be poor’. The voice of Karen Blixen is heard particularly strongly in these sententious words but the seven-course dinner is a work of art – not so much mouth-watering as a series of ravishing designs[2]. Henning Kristiansen’s compositions and lighting, of both the Jutland coast and the domestic interiors, have a blend of clarity and plainness that often suggests Danish art of the period. The lyrics of the hymns sung by the faithful are simple-minded but that simplicity is sometimes compelling, and the tunes are lovely.
6 March 2017
[1] Subsequently known as Gudmar Klöving.
[2] For the record, the menu comprises: (1) turtle soup, served with Amontillado sherry; (2) buckwheat pancakes with caviar and sour cream, served with Veuve Clicquot champagne; (3) quail in puff pastry shells with foie gras and truffle sauce, served with Clos de Vougeot Pinot Noir; (4) an endive salad; (5) rum savarin with figs and candied cherries, served with champagne; (6) cheese and fruit,, served with Sauternes; (7) coffee, served with Vieux Marc Grande Champagne cognac.