The movie chef is almost always emotionally broken and distanced from the pleasure he inspires, preferring to dish up food rather than converse. Babette's Feast is, for many, the golden measure for movies about food and cooking—perhaps because the heroine's cuisine is a form of communication, an art as spiritually uplifting as writing or music. The film concerns two religious, abstemious sisters who take in a taciturn French refugee, Babette. After many years of cooking modestly, Babette asks permission to make a real French meal. She creates the funereal cailles en sarcophages—quails stuffed with foie gras and truffles, placed in puff pastry coffins—and later we realize that in her former life, she was one of Paris' great chefs. For this night, nearly metaphysical pleasure creeps into the home of the women who have denied themselves every earthly comfort. The meal is a reclamation of Babette's creative identity and a gesture of gratitude to the sisters—a triumph of the chef as artist.