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Cinderella Was Always a Body-Horror Story
Norwegian director Emilie Blichfeldt’s The Ugly Stepsister underlines the base grotesquerie of the original fairy tale.
The film begins with wide-eyed Elvira (Lea Myren) and her younger sister Alma (Flo Fagerli) accompanying their widowed mother Rebekka (Ane Dahl Torp) to the kingdom of Swedlandia to join forces with older, single landowner Otto (Ralph Carlsson) and his lovely daughter Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Næss). An indefatigable dreamer who religiously reads the syrupy love poetry of Prince Julian (Isac Calmroth), the cheerfully apple-cheeked but perpetually awkward Elvira imagines marrying the handsome young monarch — not just because she adores him, but also because it would save her family. The film indulges Elvira’s fantasies with blasts of ethereal, anachronistic synth music and brief, hazy dream sequences; that the movie’s ostensible present doesn’t quite feel real also adds to the protagonist’s helplessness.
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