Babette’s Feast (aka Babettes gæstebuda)

Gabriel
Axel directed one of film’s greatest ‘foodie’ movies, Babette’s
Feast. In the late 1800s, Babette (Stéphane Audran), a
Catholic and French woman fleeing persecution in Paris, arrives in a
very small, very remote Dutch village to become the maid/servant/cook
for two spinster sisters – Filippa (Bodil Kjer) and Martine
(Birgitte Federspiel) – who’s father is the village’s
Protestant minister. She has in hand a letter of introduction from a
General in the Swedish army who once courted one of the sisters and
begins her daily routine. The years pass and Babette prepares bland
porridges and pours endless glasses of water for the sisters and
their small congregation. Then, one day, a letter arrives announcing
she has won the French lottery. Babette asks the sisters’
permission to prepare a celebratory dinner and they reluctantly agree
worried what the foreigner may serve. On the day of the meal, the
guests arrive determined not to be swayed by the beautiful meal but
remain stanch in their belief that dining is but a means to an end,
not an end in itself. But as the courses proceed in their glorious
gluttony, the guests forget their determination and the joy and jolly
of good food and wine takes hold. The General who originally sent
Babette to the house all those years ago is in attendance and it is
he who then relates the story of a famed Parisian chef who ran the
Café Anglais – a chef who is in fact, Babette.

Babette’s
Feast won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 1987. It is a
stunningly quiet film in the vein of the great Ingmar Bergman that
brilliantly juxtaposes the realities of two faiths when they collide
in the passion that is dining. My rating 9 out of 10.

Wall-E<span
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film, Wall-E, manages to provi
Andrew
Stanton’s wondrous little film, Wall-E, manages to provide a sly
social commentary on our current love of all things computer-related
to the detriment of both our environment and health. Wall-E is the
lone robot left on an abandoned earth who continues his task of
collecting and compacting trash until the day Eve, a probe robot
searching for life on the planet, arrives. Wall-E falls in love with
Eve and ends up following her into space and on to her mother ship.
There, decedents from Earth live, fed a constant stream of
video-messaging, on sofa chairs that convey them about the
spacecraft. Seems we are destined to become Weebles in our future and
that truth is the film’s most brilliant moment. When the renegade
main computer on the mother ship goes H-A-L, Wall-E steps in and
saves the day and the love of his life. Wall-E is a film for the ages
whose beauty rests in its gorgeous Pixar animation and its ability to
tell such a profound story with so few words. My rating 9 out of 10

Presto
Doug
Sweetland directs this quaint Pixar film about the relationship
between the great magician, Presto, and his hungry and neglected
rabbit, Alec. With the gorgeous and lush CGI animation Pixar is known
for and its romp-roaring game of cat and mouse – courtesy Presto’s
top hat – this short animation is pure magic. My rating 9 out of
10.

This Way Up
This
Way Up refers to the way we ought to carry a coffin in this short
animation from the United Kingdom that follows two undertakers in
their journey to lay a woman to rest. Directed with nods to Dante’s
Inferno by Adam Foulks and Allan Smith, and done in a stunning and
strange Edward Gorey-esque style, the story follows the two
undertakers through this world and the next as they succumb to the
vagrancies of Fate. Strange and macabre yet still funny, it is unlike
anything you’ve seen. My rating 9 out of 10.
oug Sweetland directs this quaint Pixar film about the relatio

Lavatory – Lovestory
This
Russian-made short animation, directed by Konstantin Bronzit, gives
us a love story set in the quietude of a men’s washroom. Done in a
simple black-line style – in a nod to the good olde days of
animation – it has a female washroom attendant searching for her
mystery lover amid the toilet stalls and urinals after flowers start
appearing at her counter. Odd, granted. While it is not a wow-wow
short, it is wonderfully watchable as a mystery buoyed by our desire
to see if the lady gets her man. My rating 6 out of 10.&amp;lt;!–
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Oktapodi
Directed
by Frenchmen Julien Bocabeille and Francois-Xavier Chanioux, Oktapodi
is a delightful caper set in a Greek island village when one octopus
begins to chase after his mate when he’s plucked from the aquarium
by a Greek chef bent on dinner. A classic short, at just 21/2
minutes, it is all action from the get-go and proof some great CGI
can be done by others than Pixar. My rating 7 out of 10.

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