[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:05] Speaker B: Welcome to five Minute Film Finder, brought to you by Pioneer Library System.
[00:00:13] Speaker A: Hello, and welcome to five Minute Film Finder, a Pioneer Library System podcast where we talk about films that you can watch using your Pioneer Library System library card. My name is Tracy, and today I'm joined by Darren and Darren. We're talking about movies from Kanopy's films of the month category, which was food this month.
[00:00:33] Speaker C: Yes. Foodie films, right?
[00:00:34] Speaker A: Something like that. Yes. One of these. We're gonna get to the second film. That's loose. Yes, That's a loose description of a food film.
[00:00:41] Speaker C: Very loose.
[00:00:42] Speaker A: Yes. But do you like. You are a really good cook. I know this about you. Do you like food movies?
[00:00:48] Speaker C: So people say you are.
Appreciate it.
Food movies. Yeah, I do like a.
A scene set in a kitchen.
Restaurant kitchens are great movie scenes. You know, cooking stuff and then home cooking as well. Also good movie scenes in there.
Yeah, Yeah. I was prepared not to like this movie because it is old and slow.
[00:01:17] Speaker A: First movie we're gonna talk about, but.
[00:01:18] Speaker C: Yeah, but yeah, it was fun.
[00:01:19] Speaker A: Well, some people would describe me that way too, Darren, so maybe that's why I liked it so much.
[00:01:25] Speaker C: Great.
[00:01:25] Speaker A: Do you want to. Go ahead, get into it?
[00:01:27] Speaker C: Yeah, let's talk about it.
[00:01:28] Speaker A: Okay. We're gonna have Wilhelm start the timer, and first movie we're gonna be talking about is babat's feast from 1987. I forgot to mention that both of the films we chose today are foreign films. So this is a Dutch film. It was directed by Gabrielle Axel.
Some of the actresses in it are. They're Dutch actresses. Stephanie Audran played Babette, who is the. I would say the main character. She's also in a film that's on the canopy list for this month, which is the Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.
I forgot to look up the IMDb plot synopsis of this. I'm off my game. The film is about Babette. She is a French maid who has come into the work of two Dutch kind of spinsters. Seems like a mean word, but here we are.
[00:02:11] Speaker C: Elderly, pious.
Pious, Sorry, Protestant sisters.
[00:02:15] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:02:16] Speaker C: Like they're elderly and pious.
[00:02:17] Speaker A: Yes. The indp. I got it pulled up as. During the late 19th century, a strict religious community in a Danish village takes in a French refug from the Franco Prussian War as a servant to the late pastor's daughters. Okay, I'm going to be so for real with you. I am afraid that I'm going to cry talking about this movie because I got to the end of it last night and truly sobbed. Uncontrollably, for five whole minutes. I just looked at my cat, went, that was so beautiful. And he did not care. He really wanted to go to sleep.
This movie is. It's old and slow. You are not incorrect in saying that.
It does also feel very Dutch. Like it is very stilted in a lot of ways. Before we started actually recording the podcast, we talked about it kind of stops and starts. There's a beginning where we first meet Babette and the sisters and we're like, okay, great. The beginning of the movie. And then it's like, wait, we have to talk about the sisters when they were younger and beautiful and had suitors.
[00:03:08] Speaker C: And it took 20, 30 minutes of suitors. And. Yeah, so you're learning about the characters, but it does take a little bit to get going.
[00:03:14] Speaker A: Yes. And then it pops back into our original timeline. Other reason it does have to pop back is that the movie is like, does have a narrator who's essentially like, you're right, it is weird that Babette's in this Dutch village. Let's tell you how she got here. And essentially the first sister had a suitor who was like a very kind of wild military man in the Dutch military. He thinks he's going to settle down with her. He realizes that's never going to work out. He goes back, he marries kind of a lady in waiting to a queen.
She eventually has this run in with this fabulous opera singer who she's like, oh, you should go to this for your getaway. He goes, one of the sisters is a fabulous opera singer. They fall in love. He thinks he's going to take her to the opera. That's not gonna happen. He goes back. Eventually, the Franco Prussian war happens, like it always does. Of course.
[00:04:04] Speaker C: Of course. Yep.
[00:04:04] Speaker A: As it was always meant to be. And Babad is a refugee of that war. The opera singer knows her. He sends her to the two sisters to be.
To work, to have refuge.
What they do not know is that she has one secret thing in her life left from France big, which is that her friend renews her lottery ticket every year and she wins 10,000 francs in the lottery. After 14 years of working for these women for truly no pay, Right?
[00:04:34] Speaker C: Yep. Just free labor where she makes some questionable looking food.
[00:04:40] Speaker A: Yes. At the beginning, the one thing she wants to do is for the celebration of their father's hundredth birthday, she wants to make them a classic French meal.
And they say, okay.
And then you do get, I'm gonna say, probably like a good 45 minutes to an hour of just Cooking and
[00:05:00] Speaker C: eating, cooking and eating. Lots of clinking of silverware, steaming of pots. The guy in the kitchen with his face, like his eyes bulging out every time something new came out. It's so good.
[00:05:11] Speaker A: Loved that man. Also loved her. The Dutch teenage boy that she taught to be a French waiter.
[00:05:16] Speaker C: Perfect French waiter out of nowhere.
[00:05:18] Speaker A: He was incredible. I did. So one of the things on the Wikipedia page was a description of the meal. It was like a seven course meal. I think they had turtle soup, Bellini's Dimmendorf, which were buckwheat pancakes with caviar and sour cream. And let's just say she did not go light on that caviar.
[00:05:36] Speaker C: Huge scoop.
[00:05:37] Speaker A: Huge scoops of caviar. She's also, at some point, the next thing she makes are these quails and puff pastries that she stuffs with like a chunk of foie gras and like generous servings of black truffle. Like, this is a decadent meal that she has used this lottery money on.
[00:05:49] Speaker C: These people that eat, like, bland fish and, yes, bland bread and ale soup, which looked revolting.
[00:05:57] Speaker A: The director did a really great job of doing that.
And then like a lot of these fresh fruits and these salads and these beautiful wines and things that they. Because they are pirates, religious people have always turned away this sort of thing. And it's really a movie about art.
On what it means to be an artist and what sacrifice can mean to different people and what it can mean to offer a gift and what it can mean to truly receive a gift. And I think that's why I cried. I just thought it was really beautiful about what those teachings are. Wilhelm has just screamed. We're gonna keep talking. I've never once followed the rules of this podcast.
[00:06:38] Speaker C: So the presentation of her cooking as art was interesting. When you're talking about art in a movie, it's not usually about cooking. Like when you're. When you're talking about cooking in a movie, usually it's about stress of a restaurant or, you know, whatever, something like that. It's not about the art usually in a movie. And this was the last half of the movie was about her art.
[00:07:01] Speaker A: Yes. And how this, this is the thing that she has to offer the world. And it's really, really beautiful. And I think it's just a movie that is itself really beautiful to look at and is about beauty. And I think it just really encapsulates all of it. This film did win the Oscar for Best Foreign language film of 1987, which I think it really Deserves just a couple of other fun facts.
This movie is listed as a favorite film of a few famous people. Alton Brown, the chef, Richard Gere, Stanley Tucci.
[00:07:37] Speaker C: Gotta love Tucci.
[00:07:39] Speaker A: And Pope Francis.
[00:07:40] Speaker C: Great.
[00:07:40] Speaker A: Apparently loves this movie. Of course, this director did also direct one English language film. It was called the Prince of Jutland.
It stars your guy and mine, Christian Bale, also Gabriel Byrne. Have you seen this? I was gonna be like, this really seems like something you would've seen.
[00:07:58] Speaker C: I've heard of this movie, but I don't think I've ever actually seen it.
[00:08:00] Speaker A: It's Christian Bale, Gabriel Byrne, Helen Mirren, and Kate Beckinsale. It is based off of the same myth as Hamlet is.
[00:08:07] Speaker C: Oh, okay.
[00:08:08] Speaker A: So familiar. And then the other.
I find it to be a not so fun fact. Apparently, Alexander Payne is supposed to remake this movie set in the United States, specifically in Minnesota.
[00:08:23] Speaker C: Great.
[00:08:23] Speaker A: I like Alexander Payne. I don't want to see this even a little bit. If this gets to Alexander Payne, I'm sorry, buddy. Please don't make this film.
[00:08:31] Speaker C: Yeah, I could do without that.
[00:08:33] Speaker A: I can do it.
[00:08:34] Speaker C: I can live without it.
[00:08:35] Speaker A: But I would very much recommend this movie.
[00:08:39] Speaker C: Definitely, definitely recommend. It's funny. It's funnier than I thought it was gonna be.
[00:08:42] Speaker A: Super funny. Yeah.
[00:08:43] Speaker C: Especially at the beginning. I was like, okay. Old, drab, slow, gray, you know? But yeah. Yeah, it's much funnier than I thought it was gonna be. I was pleasantly surprised.
[00:08:51] Speaker A: Yeah. And I sobbed uncontrollably. So I think it's beautiful. I think you should watch it. It is on Kanopy right now. It is rated G. I don't think necessarily children would like this movie unless you have a weird foodie kid who
[00:09:05] Speaker C: likes weird foodie kid who wants to watch that food get made.
[00:09:08] Speaker A: Yeah, I think actually for that, yes. Very much, yes. Okay, so we're gonna take a second and then we're going to move on to our next film.
And welcome back to Five Minute Film Finder. We're gonna move on to your film. Darren, you want to tee it up? Great.
[00:09:31] Speaker C: I'm so excited to talk about Delicatessen from 1991.
You may have seen the VHS box if you're old like me with the pig on it. Since forever.
Some people have seen this movie. I'd heard about it and just never watched it.
I was kind of interested because of that. And it was on that list of foodie films at the top there with Canopy, which is a misnomer you said at the beginning. That is definitely a stretch for this one.
Technically, people.
[00:10:00] Speaker A: People are eating.
[00:10:01] Speaker C: Eating. And food, or what is made into food is central to the plot of this movie. So we'll get Wilhelm ready to go and we're gonna talk about Delicatessen.
All right, so French film, like we said. I'm gonna go ahead and pull up the IMDb plot for that. But in general, had you seen this movie?
[00:10:26] Speaker A: I had not. No. I.
When I started looking stuff up about it, I was like, oh, hey, that's the guy who made Amelie directed this movie. But that's sort of like I had heard of Delicatessen before and I knew that it was a little bit gnarly. So, like, I didn't make dinner until after I watched this movie last night.
[00:10:47] Speaker C: That's probably a good plan. That's probably a good plan. Okay, so we have a post apocalyptic, surrealist black comedy about the landlord of an apartment building who occasionally prepares a delicacy for his odd tenants.
Which is a nice way of putting that.
[00:11:02] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I think. I think people know that this movie is about cannibalism.
[00:11:06] Speaker C: Cannibalism, right. Yeah. They don't. They don't hide it. The beginning of the movie opens pretty, pretty fast. You get the guy who's very scared, looking out the window and stuff, and he wraps himself up in a little trash suit.
And like, it's a great opener to this movie.
And it doesn't go well.
[00:11:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:23] Speaker C: And you learn what happens.
[00:11:24] Speaker A: He wraps himself up in a trash suit to hide himself away in the trash to try to get away from this man. Except for that he's smoking a cigarette and he throws the last cigarette butt into the trash can and he goes, ah. Which you shouldn't do if you're trying to hide from getting murdered.
[00:11:39] Speaker C: No, Just let it burn you.
[00:11:42] Speaker A: And then he gets murdered. And then we get a great title sequence of them going around.
[00:11:46] Speaker C: Lovely, beautiful. Like the little reflection. The one. The name that was reflected in the. It was so good.
[00:11:53] Speaker A: It's beautiful going around things that would be in this. Because the landlord is a butcher.
And in this post apocalyptic world, there isn't a lot of food left.
[00:12:03] Speaker C: Not a lot of food. Yeah.
[00:12:04] Speaker A: They pay each other in, like, dried legumes and corn.
[00:12:07] Speaker C: And you're weird if you eat it because you don't eat money.
[00:12:11] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, some.
There's so much weird stuff in this movie. I really liked it.
[00:12:17] Speaker C: Very French.
Like, very French.
[00:12:20] Speaker A: We did talk about it. It's the Frenchest thing I've ever seen. I think a lot of people think that because this is a cannibalism movie. It's going to be really, really gross. It's not. It's just French.
[00:12:30] Speaker C: Right. Because there's very little, like, visual violence.
[00:12:33] Speaker A: No, it is like I said, it's by the guy who directed Amelie, and it is like, if the guy who directed Amelie made a horror movie. I think there's an SNL skit that's like, what if Wes Anderson made horror?
I think it's just this movie.
[00:12:49] Speaker C: It's kind of like that.
[00:12:50] Speaker A: Yeah, there is. I was gonna say there is some dark stuff in it. It was one of the things I said we should probably warrant. There is a lot of a woman who is attempting to kill herself in this movie in more complicated ways, in increasingly complicated and ridiculous ways. So trigger warning for that, if that's something you're sensitive about.
[00:13:08] Speaker C: It is played for laughs.
[00:13:09] Speaker A: It is.
It is. This is called a dark comedy. And also, I will remind everyone, it is French.
[00:13:16] Speaker C: Very French. Very dark.
[00:13:17] Speaker A: It feels super French. The whole thing, it's French.
But the whole thing is the guy who runs the butcher shop keeps putting out these ads to get these sort of unsuspecting young men to come, and
[00:13:29] Speaker C: he gets this lovely clown.
[00:13:32] Speaker A: Yes. Which I.
Have we talked about the fact that I was a clown as a child before.
[00:13:36] Speaker C: I don't think it's come up on the podcast that I'm aware of.
[00:13:39] Speaker A: I was a clown as a child, and so. So I was like, oh, look, a clown. My friend, he does a lot of very odd things, but there are also a lot of really twee sort of cutesy things in this movie about cannibalism. So, like, the clown, there's this really beautiful scene where he's kind of charming the children by making these beautiful.
[00:13:58] Speaker C: The little smoke bubble. Because the kid's smoking a cigarette just to give him the cigarette to make the smoke bubble.
Little French kids smoking cigarettes.
[00:14:07] Speaker A: Great.
There's this scene where since he is a handyman in the apartment complex, there's a woman complaining about a squeaky spring in her bed. And they do this kind of, like, bouncing routine along to, like.
[00:14:21] Speaker C: Yeah. There's a few different, like, little bits where the whole apartment is involved in the thing. Yes. It's very interesting.
[00:14:28] Speaker A: The one with the hula movie in the background that they bounced and do, like, sort of like a dance routine. But also the whole time you're like, this man is going to get murdered.
[00:14:36] Speaker C: You're very worried about this sweet little clown guy.
[00:14:38] Speaker A: Yes. And it's got this very, like, weird sort of pastel, but covered in dirt.
Like look to it until the very end. Until the very end. When it's beautiful. Yes. And there's also a group of
[00:14:57] Speaker C: troglodyte,
[00:14:58] Speaker A: doors, vigilante, underground mole people. Vegetarians who steal people in the night.
[00:15:02] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:15:04] Speaker A: Very weird little dudes, which is a huge. Who I loved. I was like Mick movie about these guys. I'm really into whatever is up with them.
It is an odd film, but I think if you.
[00:15:18] Speaker C: And there's Wilhelm.
[00:15:19] Speaker A: There he is.
[00:15:19] Speaker C: Okay. We gotta finish it. It's so good though.
[00:15:21] Speaker A: It's. It's fun.
[00:15:22] Speaker C: I was much. I was very surprised by both of these movies.
I thought this was gonna be way grosser. Like you said. Not nearly as gross as I thought it was gonna be. I thought it was gonna be way grosser.
But yeah, it's just. It's kind of fun. Like interesting.
[00:15:36] Speaker A: Yeah. It is a. I would say a nasty little piece of work. Like it's not gross, but it is very cynical.
But if you like a mean movie, a movie that's a little bit mean.
[00:15:49] Speaker C: A little bit mean.
You want to see a guy play a saw as a musical instrument.
[00:15:54] Speaker A: Yeah. And do a dance with an extra like third leg.
[00:15:57] Speaker C: Extra third leg.
We didn't even talk about the chimp. Oh.
[00:16:01] Speaker A: Dr. Livingstone.
[00:16:01] Speaker C: Doctor. Dr. Livingstone.
The chimp who he threw knives at.
[00:16:07] Speaker A: Here's the thing.
You would literally have to watch this movie.
Even though we've said so many things that happen. None of it's going to make sense until you watch the movie.
[00:16:15] Speaker C: The weird little three bladed knife thing that he throws. The Australians that he's just a master of. Right? Yeah.
[00:16:22] Speaker A: This movie is cool and weird and dark and a little bit evil.
I say go for it.
[00:16:30] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:16:30] Speaker A: For sure.
Do you have any other food movies you would like to in general recommend? Darren, before we wrap up?
[00:16:37] Speaker C: I am.
I am a fan of Chef.
[00:16:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:41] Speaker C: I do like Chef.
[00:16:42] Speaker A: Super fun movie. John Leguizamo.
[00:16:44] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:16:44] Speaker A: Great. Never.
[00:16:46] Speaker C: But. But no, like you know, anything. Anything with a kitchen scene. Like I said, it's good.
[00:16:50] Speaker A: I was gonna say my favorite food movie was not on the canopy list but is on hoopla right now. Which is Campbell Scott and Stanley Tucci's Big Night.
[00:16:59] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:17:00] Speaker A: Which Stanley T.
And Tony Shalhoub are in. It's two brothers who.
[00:17:04] Speaker C: I do like them both.
[00:17:05] Speaker A: An Italian restaurant that is dying and so they decide to have one big last blowout. Not unlike Baez Feast, but it's. Instead of being kind of stern Dutch people, it's Tony Shalhoub and Stanley Tucci. It's a great movie. So that's on hoopla right now. Just if you're in a foodie mood and maybe not a cannibalism.
[00:17:26] Speaker C: Yeah, definitely don't watch Delicatessen. If you are looking for specifically a foodie movie, that is misnomer should be said. Once again, not a foodie movie.
[00:17:36] Speaker A: Yes. And if you want to be sad, watch Babette's Feast. But if you want to see something fun, watch Chef or Big Night. Sure, those are both great and I think both available right now. Hey, thanks for hanging out with me, Darren.
[00:17:49] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:17:50] Speaker A: Okay, if you want, you can send us an
[email protected] with your comments, questions, concerns, or ideas for movies for us to watch.
Otherwise, we'll see you next time. Bye.
[00:18:03] Speaker C: See you.
[00:18:07] Speaker B: Five Minute Film Finder is a digital program brought to you by Pioneer Library System in Oklahoma.
All opinions expressed in this episode are those of the host and not those of the organization.
Five Minute Film Finder is produced, recorded and mixed by Ben Si. Theme music by Ben Si.
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