Wednesday, June 7, 2017

Babette's Feast (Babettes gæstebud ) (1987)

Director: Gabriel Axel. Cast: Stéphane Audran, Bodil Kjer, Birgitte Federspiel. 102 min. Rated G. Denmark. Comedy/Drama.

Two old sisters in a small 19th-century Danish village take in a French refugee as a maid. She wins the lottery, and as a token of appreciation, throws a feast to commemorate their religious father's 100th birthday. While almost a third of this Foreign-Language Oscar winner details the dinner feast, the funny, light-hearted tone can't hide how deep it digs into the the contrast between traditionalism and modernism: how modernists absent-mindedly serve the rigid conservative, and how the conservative benefit from modernism while simultaneously (and very loudly) despising it. A message that rings true to this day.

Mo says:

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