The Ugly Stepsister

Body horror meets fairy tale in this kinky, darkly comedic take on the Cinderella myth where the villainess becomes the downtrodden, disparaged one.

I don’t usually pay much attention to the marketing of a movie I’m going to review, much less pass it on to readers. That’s the fluff surrounding a film, and I’m trying to get past that to provide a clear, unpremeditated take on how well it did at whatever it was trying to do.

But I did guffaw at the pitch for “The Ugly Stepsister.” Behold: “‘Bridgerton’ meets ‘The Substance’ in upcoming Nordic body-horror.’

Okay, as a marketer by day, that just slaps. Kudos to whatever copywriter in some recessed cubicle who came up with that. Not only is it catchy, it sums up the flick better than I did.

I was going to open this review with something like, “The Cinderella myth meets body horror with a side of perv.” Theirs is infinitely superior, so let’s go with that.

A Norwegian film written and directed by Emilie Blichfeldt in a strong feature debut, “Stepsister” looks at the Cinderella story from the perspective of the oldest stepsister, Elvira, played by Lea Myren. From her perspective, she’s the downtrodden and disparaged one in favor of her much prettier stepsis, Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Næss).

The story opens with Elvira and her younger sibling, Alma (Flo Fagerli), arriving at the castle of Agnes’ father, Otto von something-or-other (Ralph Carlsson). They’re highborn sorts and, Elvira’s mother Rebekah (Ane Dahl Torp) thought, wealthy as well. Turns out Otto believed the same thing about them, but they’re both penniless outside of his property.

When Otto inconveniently kicks off on their wedding night, this newly arranged family suddenly faces all sorts of dire challenges, especially after the taxmen make off with all their farmland and cattle. Rebekah literally leaves Otto’s body to rot in the dining hall while they scrimp and save their krones on other things than a proper funeral.

Elvira is a rather simple-minded teenage romantic who has fallen in love with the poetry of Prince Julian (Isac Calmroth), the local monarch-in-waiting, and has seriously deluded herself into believing she will one day marry him. Her mom shares this desire as it will solve all their money problems, though she’s calculating enough to settle for a mere baron or even a well-to-do merchant as a fallback.

Unfortunately for her, Elvira has a bit of a hooked nose, large 1800s-style braces on her teeth and a rather round midsection. Nevertheless, Rebekah is determined to spend whatever meager resources they have to turn her into a catch, employing the services of the eccentric Dr. Esthétique (Adam Lundgren), whose motto is “Beauty is Pain,” and has the torturous devices and practices to prove it.

Never mind that Agnes is already drop-dead gorgeous and a seemingly easier bit of bait for the prince. Alas, she’s clandestinely carrying on with the stable boy, Isak (Malte Gårdinger), and we know how ardent the power brokers in fairy tales are about their virgins. Plus, she’s smart and headstrong and hence not easily controlled like Elvira.

I’ll pause here to say that, of course Myren is a lovely young lady — she’s actually worked as a model and sort of resembles a Viking Christina Ricci of yesteryear. Movies that tackle the challenging subject of outrageous female beauty standards have a way of using conventionally attractive actresses to make their point.

I was not a fan of “The Substance,” to which this movie bears a strong thematic resemblance — you can read my full thinking here, but the short version is I thought it gleefully exploited female bodies in satirizing their exploitation. “Stepsister” does not, and in fact there’s more graphic male nudity in it than the other way round.

Elvira goes through an increasing bizarre and horrifying series of procedures in order to become more of a standout candidate for the prince, from extraordinary physical torture — having her nose broken with what is basically a mining tool — to all sorts of emotional manipulation and humiliation. She is signed up for the best finishing school, run by two ladies: a mean one who spitefully criticizes her dancing and banishes her to the back row, and the nicer one who gives her a tapeworm egg to ingest to help with those extra pounds.

Soon Elvira is turned into a walking freakshow: her nose covered with metallic encasement that looks like a chastity belt for the face; ridiculous fake eyelash extenders stitched to her lids; a golden piled wig to hide the hair falling out in clumps from all the stress and gastric discombobulation.

As she becomes superficially lovelier, Elvira also becomes gradually meaner, though not necessarily in an intentional or vindictive way. She’s just riding the wave of pretty privilege that had been withheld from her for so long. She treats Agnes as a servant, which is not that out of line since Rebekah has punished her by assigning her stepdaughter to manual labor, thus assuming the Cinderella role.

I have to say that Alma, after being pretty much ignored the whole movie, shows surprising depth and agency in the last act. Left to her own devices as being too young for the prince, she takes on tomboyish activities, is annoyed by their mothers’ scheming but still loves Elvira despite her descent.

The movie is pretty graphic, both in terms of the bodily carnage and the sex. The marriage of the Cinderella mythology and body horror is really not as much of a stretch as you might think.

The whole fable is about a plain, regular girl being transformed by magic into a figure who can beguile a prince into marrying her and living her happily ever after. There’s also the whole foot fetishism thing — a topic the movie will eventually dig into — and the part about turning back into a pumpkin at midnight, a warning to get hitched before time runs out and you’re not a hot young thang anymore.

(As a dude, I’ll just toss in the counter argument that today’s biggest loggerheads in the dating world is that women, like Elvira, are solely focused on the princes when by definition there’s not many to go around, and anything less is settling. They call it hypergamy, aka “90 percent of women chasing 10 percent of men,” a dynamic that increasingly leads to a lot of people winding up alone.)

“The Ugly Stepsister” is gross, funny and also serves as a sobering lesson to ignore all those trap-laden fairy tales and take people as they come. Most of us are closer to Elvira than Agnes; learn to live and love. I’m a goofy-looking guy, and I did OK.

“The Ugly Stepsister” will have a limited theatrical run starting April 18, UK cinemas starting April 25 followed by VOD on May 9.