30DMC: Day 18

Ok, I'm balking at this one because it's "A movie you wish more people would see" and if that isn't Smoke or Big Night I just don't know what to say. Hmm.

Like books, it is hard to recommend movies that are more than fluff. I can whole-heartedly tell other moms about my opinions on Toy Story III, for instance, but I have a harder time telling friends that they'd just love Trainspotting. Because really? No they wouldn't.

But I have one. I saw Babette's Feast while on a parish women's retreat back when Maeve was a baby. It must have been Autumn '05. It's a story in itself, actually, involving a strident young mother about my age with serious issues with religion. She left, in fact, during the retreat, she was so upset by the marvelous woman who was leading us. That retreat, in fact, is where I learned first about Hildegard of Bingen, which led me to the Rule of Benedict, which led me to becoming an oblate. So it was an important event for me.

But anyway. Babette's Feast. It's in Danish and French, and it's a movie set in this godforsaken Danish village on the ocean. Two spinster sisters, the daughters of a severe protestant minister, live there and still sort of run the religious sect he left when he died. There is no enjoyment in life. Then Babette arrives, a refugee from France (during the revolution). She comes with a letter of recommendation from someone the sisters know, and they employ her as housekeeper and cook. Lots of boiled fish. They are suspicious because she is French and Catholic, but they let her live there.

And, like Big Night, it is a story about a meal. But it's different from Big Night. A little bit of Guy de Maupassant at the end, and there is quite a bit of Eucharistic imagery. Watch it while drinking a glass of red wine.