![]() Mindful of their responsibilities to their father and his reformist mission, each daughter turns down a beloved suitor. ![]() ![]() ''Babette's Feast'' is set in the second half of the 19th century on Denmark's remote Jutland coast, in a small fishing village whose most notable inhabitants are a fervent Protestant pastor and his two beautiful, pious daughters, Martine and Filippa. In this case, however, they have the effect of subtly amplifying the distinctive voice of the storyteller, who can make great leaps forward and backward in time without destroying the commanding unity of the tale. Subtitles, under most circumstances, are simply a necessary intrusion. What with the English subtitles that translate the Danish dialogue and soundtrack narration, one spends almost as much time reading ''Babette's Feast'' as watching it. ''Babette's Feast'' will be shown at the New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center tonight at 9:15 and on Monday at 6:15 P.M. TAKING a longish tale, ''Babette's Feast,'' from Isak Dinesen's last collection, ''Anecdotes of Destiny'' (1958), Gabriel Axel has made a very handsome, very literary movie that does justice to the precision of the Dinesen prose, to the particularity of her concerns and to the ironies that so amused her. ![]()
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