Babette's Aging?)

Was there a reason that they did not age Babette over what was at a minimum a 15 year span, and was likely much longer?

They very deliberately showed the sisters aging from the time Babette arrived, to the time we were told it was 14 years later, to the time we were told "much more time had passed."

My first guess was that Babette was supposed to be much younger than the actress who played her, when we first see her. This doesn't make sense since she had been able to achieve the position of chef at a fancy restaurant before she ever came to Jutland. That would have been tough enough for a woman then, and impossible for one in her 20s. She would have likely had at least a decade or two in preparing food before achieving that position.


"My name is Paikea Apirana, and I come from a long line of chiefs stretching all the way back to the Whale Rider."