Babette’s Feast (Babettes gæstebud). Gabriel Axel, 1987.
😿😿
Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #665, released 2013. Danish language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 103 minutes.
Summary: Display of butchered animals.
Details:
1) Delicate striped fish are shown cleaned and drying outdoors on a rack, 01:05-01:38. This is the first of several images that convey harsh but simplistically beautiful life, pre-Babette and her Feast.
2) At 56:00 we see all the ingredients for the titular Feast being unloaded from a boat, including a crate of quail and a sea turtle. This is the set-up for the predictable money shot of a severed cow head and a bunch of bird heads and feet dumped into a cart 1:02:22-1:02:32.
3) The predictable gore of Fine Cuisine (skinning and plucking, severed heads, eroticized fondling of dead bodies) occurs 1:03:49-1:04:24 and again 1:09:05-1:09:43.
Some licensing agreement for Babette’s Feast requires that any published reference contains a phrase like “the ultimate movie for gourmets and foodies,” and an acknowledgement that Boy, I got hungry just watching this one, lol! So there you go.
If your taste in foreign film runs toward Il Postino and Belle Epoque, then you won’t want to miss Babette’s Feast.