Delicious Danish film Babette's Feast is a joy from starter to dessert

A FEW people I know rate Babette's Feast (Thursday, 3.25pm, World Movies) their all-time favourite film.

babette's feast

A FEW people I know rate Babette's Feast (Thursday, 3.25pm, World Movies) their all-time favourite film and it has many claims to fame: Denmark's most successful film, a huge international hit, winner of the best foreign film Oscar in 1987 and by common consent the best film about food.

Not bad for a gentle, meditative story with no sex or violence, set in a pious Christian community on the coast of Jutland in the late 19th century, and based on a story by Karen Blixen (aka Isak Dinesen, whom Meryl Streep portrayed in Out of Africa).

Two sisters take in a desperate Frenchwoman (Stephane Audran), a refugee from counter-revolutionary bloodshed in Paris. To repay their kindness, Babette uses the proceeds of a lottery win to prepare a sumptuous meal for the whole village. One of the charms of Gabriel Axel's film is in showing how Babette's culinary delights are able to break down the puritanical attitudes of the villagers. Funny, humane, mouth-watering and a joy from start to finish.

Asghar Farhadi's A Separation (Friday, 8.30pm, M Masterpiece), a jewel from Iran, beat strong competition from Israel (Footnote) and Canada (Monsieur Lazhar) to win the foreign film Oscar last year. It's the story of an Iranian couple who have to choose between moving to another country for the sake of their daughter or staying in Iran to look after the husband's ageing father, who has Alzheimer's.

Farhadi was lucky to finish the film. The Iranian Ministry of Culture put an early ban on production (later relaxed with conditions), and after the film's Oscar success the authorities cancelled a ceremony in honour of Farhadi. The film is a brave and wonderfully clear-eyed depiction of domestic life in Iran, with universal resonance. Leila Hatami is especially memorable as the wife who values her independence above marriage.

Barton Fink (Tuesday, 8.30pm, M Masterpiece) is a macabre comedy from Joel and Ethan Coen about a New York playwright (John Turturro) seduced by a lucrative offer to go to Hollywood. Trapped in a surreal hotel room, he suffers hallucinations and writer's block - all of it deliciously spooky and shot with stunning technical bravura. The main character is said to be modelled on playwright Clifford Odets, who quit his left-wing roots in New York to write Hollywood screenplays during World War II.

And best of all is perhaps Strangers on a Train (Wednesday, 10.35pm, Fox Classics), a Hitchcock masterpiece from the 1950s based on Patricia Highsmith's novel about a half-baked murder plot that goes horribly wrong. Alfred Hitchcock worked closely on the screenplay with Raymond Chandler. Farley Granger is caught in a deadly conspiracy he can't control and Robert Walker gives us one of Hitch's most evil and charismatic villains, to be compared with Joseph Cotten's Uncle Charlie in Shadow of a Doubt.

CRITIC'S CHOICE

Babette's Feast (PG)
4 stars
Thursday, 3.25pm, World Movies

A Separation (M)
4 stars
Friday, 8.30pm, M Masterpiece

Strangers on a Train (M)
5 stars
Wednesday, 10.35pm, Fox Classics