Sort By: By Genre  |  By Rating  |  By Year

Babette's Feast

Starring: Stephane Audran
Director: Gabriel Axel
Genre: Drama
Year: 1987
Rating: 2 / 5

Reviewed by Guest Scribe Legend

Babette's Feast is a simple film which rode a wave of success to an academy award in the late 1980s. How this was seen as the best foreign language film of the year is beyond me. To summarize the plot, a French woman named Babette moves to Denmark and works for a pair of old unmarried women, who are puritanically religious. The favorite activity of the sisters and the rest of their hamlet is singing religious hymns. Babette wins the lottery back in France, and spends her winnings on preparing an enormous French style feast for the villagers. Woops, I spoiled it! That's basically all that happens in the entire movie.

This movie I found to be tediously boring. I kept waiting for something to happen, and it never does. It is excruciatingly uneventful, the plot just plods along ruthlessly. The kernel of the movie is to show the awakening of the fervent religious types who see the sumptuous food as evil and overindulgent. However, there is so much filler here that I had to resist every urge to hit the fast forward button.

Visually, the film is not enjoyable either. Set on the dreary Jutland peninsula of Denmark, everything is gloomy and grey. Supposedly, Babette's Feast has deliberately been washed out to reflect the time period and the geography. However, this makes the movie look extremely dated. Authenticity notwithstanding, it is not a good-looking film.

Hence, I would not recommend anyone see this film, as it is one of the most boring that I have ever seen. I give it two stars for a one reason: I will allow leniency because I saw the English dubbed version. From what I understand, the English track is horrible. Personally, I always aim to see foreign films with subtitles since inflection and emotion in voice is very important to the film going experience. This film has horrid English dubbing. Thus, I will give the Danish track and the good sense of the Academy the benefit of the doubt in awarding a reluctant two stars.

Cast:

Certification: Rated G.
Running Time: 102 minutes.

Additional Info: Internet Movie Database
Comments: Send E-mail