Dining Well Is the Best Revenge BABETTE'S FEAST

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

What does an artist require of life? Quite simple things, really. The time and solitude necessary to temper talent and vision. A little money for supplies. The emotional support of kindly and patient friends. The right historical moment to present his work. And, finally, a sympathetic, critical champion, gently guiding an audience to proper appreciation of the artist's gifts. Simple things, yes. But how hard they are to come by, what luck is required in the quest, and how rarely artists themselves confront their difficulties in an engaging spirit. The whine of self-pity, the bombast of self-aggrandizement, the low moan of tragedy are the notes most often heard from the creator on the subject of his life.

Movies, of course, have always been the most ludicrous offenders in this regard. They so often turn the stealth and cunning by which most artists survive into confrontational melodrama. How marvelous to find a film that comes at this subject from the right direction -- obliquely, metaphorically -- and in the proper mood of delicate and gallant irony.

Despite her name's presence in the title of this adaptation of an Isak Dinesen story, Babette Hersant (Stephane Audran) does not appear in the film until it is almost half over. Even then she is, as it were, in disguise. She is presented merely as a Frenchwoman rendered homeless and penniless by the Communard uprising of 1871 in Paris, seeking refuge in a remote village in Jutland on Denmark's northern coast. If there is something unusual in her bearing, its source -- an extraordinary talent -- is not hinted at. For 14 years she toils unpaid, uncomplaining, almost unspeaking, as cook and servant for the spinster sisters Martina (Birgitte Federspiel) and Philippa (Bodil Kjer), who give her shelter.

They are the sweetly pious daughters of a visionary preacher. While he lives, they sacrifice their lives to his faintly absurd beliefs. After he dies, they devote themselves to his memory by keeping his dwindling, aging, increasingly fractious flock together. Their story, stretching over many years, is told with deft economy and quiet wit by Writer-Director Gabriel Axel, who builds an uncannily rich texture out of the simplest materials. Still, the viewer muses, this picture is called Babette's Feast. Where is Babette? Where is her feast?

Waiting. Serenely waiting. For fate to do its stuff. It turns out that the seemingly irrelevant history of the spinsters' lives, the lovers they long ago rejected, their eccentric religious community, are all essential for Babette's apotheosis. The revelation of her true identity -- she was at one time Paris' premier chef -- does not startle once she begins preparations for her triumph. But there are wonderful surprises in store. Follow the intricate ways in which her benefactors' pasts provide Babette with an occasion. Scan the crowd, at once skeptical yet starving for a masterpiece. Listen for that pompous critical voice leading the group from dubiety to joyous surrender. "Righteousness and bliss" is how that voice summarizes their experience.

But he is right. In all of film there is no happier ending than this one: an artist achieving transcendence, her audience learning for the first (and possibly last) time the transforming power of art. Maybe it is not a miracle, but it is a foretaste of the paradise for which they have prayed all their pinched and gloomy lives. And Axel is a worthy saucier's apprentice. His orchestration of this parable matches her culinary skills in subtlety, verve and perfect taste. From soup to cognac, Babette's Feast is delicious, a meal that memory will forever savor.