Babette's Feast

It's the late nineteenth century in a small Danish fishing village on Jutland. The daughters of the village's now deceased pastor who founded his own Protestant sect, elderly spinster sisters Martine and Filippa, under their father's influence, have made the decision to continue on with his work, service to God, including assisting the small number of existing and equally elderly congregants with things they cannot handle themselves, such as providing them with basic peasant meals. Considered beautiful and talented when they were younger, each sister had the potential opportunity for a more self-fulfilled life, visiting Swedish military officer Lorens Lowenhielm who was contemplating marrying Martine and Paris impresario Achille Papin believing Filippa the next singing sensation, but each independent of the other chose the life with which they have ended up together. In 1871, middle age Parisienne Babette Hersant ends up on their doorstep in distress with nothing but a letter from Achille asking them to employ Babette who has lost everything in Paris and is running from a war there. Unable to do so in having no money to pay her, they do end up taking her in in her plea that she does not need pay. They end up teaching Babette how to prepare the simple meals, she who becomes their cook and housekeeper. Babette slowly transforms the household and the village in being more shrewd in business dealings which the other villagers can see. Fourteen years later, the sisters want to hold a simple dinner for their congregants to honor what would have been their father's one hundreth birthday. Concurrently, Babette learns that she has won FF10,000 in a lottery. Expecting Babette to leave to go back to a more settled Paris, the sisters are surprised by Babette's subsequent request, the only thing she has asked of them in fourteen years: in what they still expect will be her imminent departure forever, she wants beforehand not only to prepare but pay for the dinner, it to be a proper French meal. Before the meal actually happens, the sisters regret their decision to allow her to do so in believing they have brought evil upon themselves and the other villagers in indulging in excess. What happens is affected by Babette's true rationale for the meal which comes to light afterward, and a last minute attendee, now General Lowenhielm.