Cinderella’s stepsister stars in the most brutal and bloody movie of the year

More than a thousand years before Walt Disney it occurred to him to adapt fairy tales, in China the youngest children were told the story of Ye-Hsien, a young woman mistreated by her family who loses her shoe at a party. The similarities are too many to think that it is a simple coincidence – remember that Cinderella had abnormally small feet, a beauty trait that refers to lotus feet or the practice of foot binding since the Song dynasty – but the story came to us thanks to the Brothers Grimm and Perrault. Their versions are much gorier and bloodier than the mythical Disney story: Cinderella decapitates her stepmother with a trunk, her stepsisters cut off their toes and heels to fit the shoe and, furthermore, they end up blind because some pigeons sting their eyes as they leave the church. Come on, the usual thing at that time.

Since then, we have seen many variations of the tale of Cinderellausually sweetened and adapted to current times (there is even a version with Jennifer López), because if something characterizes fairy tales is that they can be told over and over again. But now comes the darkest, bloodiest and gore version since the Grimms decided to put pen to paper: The ugly stepsistera Norwegian production that lands in theaters this Friday and is the first film by Emilie Blichfeldt. The young director comes to join the lists along with the French ones Coralie Fargeat (The substance) y Julia Ducournau (Titanium) to show us that it is women who in recent times are conceiving the body horror more brutal. Yeah The substance It made you gag, you better stay away from this movie.

On this occasion, Blichfeldt has decided to focus on the history of one of the Cinderella’s stepsisters instead of the usual protagonist of the story. Elvira (It’s Myrena canonically pretty actress who has had to be given many prosthetics to make her appear unattractive) is the eldest daughter of a rather heartless widow (Ane Dahl Torp), which decides to marry an apparently rich widower who dies on their wedding night no less and who is left to rot in a room for the rest of the film, because for some incomprehensible reason they don’t feel like paying for a decent burial.

When both Elvira’s mother and Agnes-Cinderella, the widower’s daughter (Thea Sofie Loch Næss) discover that neither of the two recently related families actually has any money, they all decide to put their efforts into the laudable work of making the man fall in love. prince julian (prince of the kingdom, played by Isaac Calmroth) at the palace balls. Until then, everything is similar to the story, except that the prince is a horrible person, Cinderella is not as virginal as she seems and the envy that Elvira feels towards her stepsister is simmering until it explodes, logically, in the last part of the movie.

With a lot of ugliness, a little pastel tones kitsch (Marie Antoinette by Sofia Coppola has done a lot of damage), and camera zooms that look like B series, The ugly stepsister criticizes the canons of beauty and the brutalities that women do to be beautiful and please men with extra blood and cosmetic operations of a apparently edwardian era. Because some of the procedures that Elvira undergoes throughout the film in order to be pretty and conquer the prince existed: before rhinoplasties were invented, rudimentary nose jobs were already being performed (or attempted), and although it was a later “fad”, the famous diet of eat tapeworm eggs with the purpose of losing weight (and perhaps dying trying).

It is not the first time nor will it be the last that a fairy tale is transformed into a horror story or a black fable. Snow White, a tale of terror (1997), Hansel and Gretel witch hunters (2013), The Lure (2015, The little mermaid turned into a horror musical) or Beauty and the Beast (Panna a netvor) from 1978 are just a few examples, although there are many more. There are many reasons for this: they are universal and easy to reinterpret, contemporary audiences look for new but familiar things in which they can review nostalgically the stories that marked his childhood, but in an adult way and, as we pointed out at the beginning of the article, the fairy tales were already dark in their origin although Disney later sweetened them.

Some of the procedures that Elvira undergoes in order to be pretty and win over the prince existed in the Edwardian era.

It more than meets all of these aspects. The ugly stepsisteralthough for any sensitive stomach it can be an unpleasant experience, with a quite apotheotic ending and a unsubtle and too grotesque metaphor, in some cases even pornographic. Blichfeldt spits on us (almost literally) blood on the face to remind us that vanity and aesthetic obsessions, so common in the age of TikTok, can end really badly, even though we are not going to cut off our toes to fit our shoes. Although the ending is deceiving, who really comes out worse, Cinderella, who because she is pretty ends up with the prince who is a horrible human being, or Elvira, who at least has the support (and sisterhood) of her little sister? The viewer will have to choose between doses of parturient screams and synthesizer music. This Friday in theaters.

More than a thousand years before Walt Disney it occurred to him to adapt fairy tales, in China the youngest children were told the story of Ye-Hsien, a young woman mistreated by her family who loses her shoe at a party. The similarities are too many to think that it is a simple coincidence – remember that Cinderella had abnormally small feet, a beauty trait that refers to lotus feet or the practice of foot binding since the Song dynasty – but the story came to us thanks to the Brothers Grimm and Perrault. Their versions are much gorier and bloodier than the mythical Disney story: Cinderella decapitates her stepmother with a trunk, her stepsisters cut off their toes and heels to fit the shoe and, furthermore, they end up blind because some pigeons sting their eyes as they leave the church. Come on, the usual thing at that time.