Director Gabriel Axel with Stéphane Audran, Birgitte Federspiel, Bodil Kjer

Somewhere remote on the Danish coast in the 19th century. A slight touch of a fairy tale about it: there’s a narrator, and if she doesn’t actually start the film with “Once upon a time . . .”, she certainly comes close. Mysterious visitors turn up on their doorstep, there is an almost magical feast, and heaven with its angels is the world beyond.

Two elderly pious sisters, named after Luther and Melanchthon, spend their days in devotion and good works. They are part of a dwindling congregation founded by their late father – all members now elderly and occasionally fractious. In their youth, one sister had been loved by a visiting soldier but he had been called away, and the other had taken singing lessons with a famous French baritone. There was a beautiful scene of them singing the seduction duet from Don Giovanni lovingly but chastely – her final lesson, by her choice. Years pass, they grow old: a Frenchwoman, Babette, fleeing the Franco-Prussian war seeks refuge with them, and she becomes their cook and housekeeper. More years pass, they grow older; Babette wins the lottery and insists on preparing a real French dinner for the congregation – plus, as last-minute additions, the soldier (now a famous general) and his aunt; they are now twelve at table. The sisters quail before the rich food and wine that arrives in their kitchen, fearing that the dinner will be sinfully indulgent and akin to a witches’ sabbath. They urge the congregation to eat and drink but not to mention the luxury of what is put before them.

And they don’t. Only the worldly general is conscious of the magnificence of the food and of Babette’s skill. Yet all of them are touched by the spirit of the feast, which feeds them physically and spiritually. The quarrelsome congregation – their faces now rosy-tinged – retrieve their love for each other, and the general’s old frustrated love is turned into spiritual contentment. Babette’s sublime feast is food for the soul.

What struck me about the film was its attitude towards religious faith. I’m so used to my secular little world and seeing religion only through a cultural lens: “real” religion is the source of wars; in real life and in fiction it is often allied to hypocrisy (Jimmy Swaggart, Uriah Heep); it sits uneasily with feminism or liberal social attitudes; it focuses on heaven rather than real life; it is a thwarting and limiting force in the expansive modern world where almost anything is possible. It brings to mind the baleful Christianity of St John Rivers or the Bishop in Fanny and Alexander. Even a thoroughly “good” character like Dorothea Brooke is led into unhappy confinement by her faith and her wish to follow its precepts. I’m exaggerating, of course – traditional religious faith may get outward respect but doesn’t normally get a good press. It is too restrictive for modern unreligious minds. But in Babette’s Feast the sisters’ faith is shown uncondescendingly; they feel no regret at (what I would see as) their choice of narrow, monotonous lives and missed love affairs; they really are content and as good as they appear. Art is presented as a quasi-spiritual experience – Babette’s feast or the baritone’s music – but it is one of the sisters who has the final word about heaven and angels. I suppose in that respect I too found the film of Babette’s Feast transformative (as well as enjoyable – did I mention that?): it made me reconsider how to think about the presentation of religion.