The Ugly Stepsister (Den stygge stesøsteren)

Fairy tales are notoriously easy to bend one way or another either wholesome and nice or violent and nasty. The former is usually the route that Disney has preferred to with their adaptations, while others have gleefully stretched the unpleasantness that usually found in the original versions.

In this adaptation of the Brothers’ Grimm’s Cinderella, Norwegian writer and director Emilie Blichfeldt with her impressive feature debut has most definitely gone for the nasty, and from an original perspective.

Using washed out colours that give the film a dreamlike quality, the Cinderella here is Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Naess), the daughter of the wealthy Otto (Ralph Carlsson) due to marry widower Rebekka (Ane Dahl Torp) and adopting her two daughters, Elvira (Lea Myren) and the younger Alma (Flo Fagerli).

It turns out that Rebekka was duped and with Otto dying, with no cash decides that Elvira will marry for money. Agnes has a natural beauty while Elvira has her teeth in braces, though looking deeper she has other admirable and attractive qualities.

None of which cuts any ice with Rebekka who prepares Elvira for the prince’s ball by breaking her nose and stitching fake eyelashes to her eyelids. These are among other grotesqueries carried out in an attempt to make her visually attractive to the prince.

All of which Elvira tolerates as she dreams of her Prince Charming and being carried away to a fairytale castle, ever though he is a misogynistic dullard.

That Blichfeldt is trying to make a larger point about the superficiality of surface beauty over inner is obvious. There is the unpleasant male gaze during the ball, as well as the prince himself. The problems is that there isn’t any subtlety; it is bulldozed by the level of cruelty and violence meted out to Elvira, her sister Alma relived she’s best out of it, or fearful of what is coming.

This isn’t a typical adaptation either as Elvira is at the centre of this version of the story and as such there’s plenty of sympathy for her. She may be naïve about the prince but she’s terribly manipulated and the wretched victim of an overpowerful male hierarchy that her mother is determination to comply with.

The Ugly Stepsister is available on Shudder.