The Ugly Stepsister

Ane Dahl Torp and Lea Myren              

Emilie Blichfeldt's The Ugly Stepsister is a twist on the tale of Cinderella that combines feminism, body horror, and black humor. This Norwegian film, Blichfeldt's feature debut, is set in the early Victorian era and shifts the central focus of the tale to the plight of Cinderella's stepsister, here named Elvira (Lea Myren). After watching her new stepdad choke to death on his wedding cake, Elvira becomes the focus of her very evil mother's plan to find a new meal ticket. Since Elvira is "ugly", her mother ( a droll Ane Dahl Torp) enlists a series of quacks to improve her looks. Elvira gets her teeth fixed, her nose adjusted, her eyelashes augmented, and, my personal favorite, ingests a tapeworm in order to lose weight. Sex, in the film is purely a form of commerce in which erotic favors are exchanged for financial security. The ultimate prize is, of course, the hand in matrimony of the prince, but we know how this fairy tale ends.

Because it hews closely to the original fable, The Ugly Stepsister suffers a little from predictability. However, only a churl could resist the film's gorgeous production design and costumes. There are no weak performances and a large number of quite amusing ones. Blichfeldt cribs a little too much from Poor Things and there are also nods to the films of Busby Berkeley and Walerian Borowczyk. The Ugly Stepsister is not a film for tikes, but Blichfeldt's fidelity to the original tale's undercurrent of savagery makes this a much more provocative adaption than the anodyne animated Disney version.