The latest from Oscar®- and Palme d’Or-winning director Bille August takes on his compatriot, the legendary Danish writer Karen Blixen (a.k.a. Isak Dinesen). But this isn’t the lively, laughing Blixen of the Out of Africa days. This is the sixtysomething, terribly ill Baroness in her twilight years, living a carefully controlled existence at Rungstedlund, her family’s coastal estate north of Copenhagen. Still charismatic and maintaining her image as a literary genius, she delights in manipulating the lives of her younger writer friends. The Pact is based on a book by Thorkild Bjørnvig who, as a talented 30-year-old poet suffering from writer’s block, was offered a Faustian bargain by Blixen (played in the film by a mesmerizing Birthe Neumann). She promises him literary stardom if he obeys her unconditionally, including agreeing to renounce his family. Under her wing, he finds that his words begin to flow, but his librarian wife and young son wind up paying the price.