The Ugly Stepsister

If you’ve grown weary of Disney’s endless live-action remakes, consider The Ugly Stepsister a burst of fairytale counterprogramming. A reimagined version of Cinderella that brings one of the previously unnamed stepsiblings out of the background and into the spotlight, Norwegian writer/director Emilie Blichfeldt’s body-horror update to the story made waves at Sundance and is now in theaters ahead of an eventual streaming premiere on Shudder. Belonging to the same tradition as Catherine Breillat’s Bluebeard and Agnieszka Smoczyńska’s The Lure, it’s the rare new take on old material that actually feels new.

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Elvira (Lea Myren) hasn’t actually met the Prince of Swedlandia, but reading his poetry has her so smitten that she wants to marry him sight unseen. Outfitted in braces and unflattering ringlet curls lest she belie the film’s title, she learns that she might have a chance to make her dream come true when an emissary from the throne announces an upcoming ball. Any “virgin of noble birth” is welcome to throw her hat in the ring, meaning both Elvira and her more becoming stepsister Agnes (Thea-Sofie Loch Næss) make the list.

The Ugly Stepsister is, among other things, a tale of obsession. Elvira doesn’t just want to marry the prince in a puppy love sort of way; she’s convinced herself that she needs to, and can think of no other way to find a modicum of self-worth. Initially dismissive of the idea, her mother (Ane Dahl Torp) — who, unlike Elvira, is just as wicked here as she is in prior versions of the tale — decides to help her in the hopes of improving the entire family’s station. She doesn’t do so by assuring her daughter that she’s beautiful inside and out, however. She does it by paying for a series of brutal cosmetic procedures.

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Elvira undergoes primitive rhinoplasty via hammer and chisel, has eyelash extensions sown into her eyelids, swallows a tapeworm to lose weight, and dons a blonde wig after her darker locks start falling out in clumps — all in the name of landing the kingdom’s most eligible bachelor. (She’s All That this is not.) Pain is beauty and beauty is pain here, and Blichfeldt doesn't shy away from the graphic details of these procedures. “You’re changing your outside to fit what you know is on the inside,” one of Elvira’s coaches tells her. Her tragedy is that she doesn't begin questioning whether all this is worth it until long after we do.

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You could call this body horror, and it is, but only insofar as archaic cosmetic surgery was horrific. It’s a clever take on a crowded genre that functions similarly to The Substance: the real horrors are the expectations placed on young and not so young women, impossible beauty standards that no one can meet but everyone is compelled to uphold. Elvira is constantly being compared not only to her stepsister but to every other girl competing for the prince’s attention, reminded of her low place in the pecking order at every opportunity.

It's the rare new take on old material that actually feels new.

Crucially, the film doesn’t recast Elvira as the heroine and Cinderella as the villain. It resides in the grey area between those two extremes, as does most of real life. Living under the same roof and trapped in the same oppressive circumstances, they have more in common than either cares to admit. That they turn against one another rather than the powers that be — namely the prince himself, who’s little more than a sexist boor — is only to their own detriment.

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An eclectic, mood-setting score by John Erik Kaada ranges from whistles and dream-sequence harps to synthesizers and shrill vocalizations, putting us in Elvira’s disorienting headspace and daring us to try to find a way out. It’s as important to the overall experience as Blichfeldt’s assured direction and Myren’s performance, which threads a difficult needle: portraying a doe-eyed debutante with the skill of a seasoned veteran.

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The Ugly Stepsister succeeds in its first, most important task: convincing us that Elvira’s perspective is just as valid as Cinderella’s and there’s more to this fairytale than we originally thought. Though it takes a different path — one much darker and more gnarled — it also arrives at essentially the same conclusion as its source material while asking us whether that’s something to be celebrated. One story’s happy ending is another story’s tragedy.