First Norwegian film Emilie Blichfeldt, The Ugly Stepsister embarks on the path of a well known and popular tale by Disney to make us an updated and feminist version, as gore as well as acerbe. A very nice entry in matters for the filmmaker whose film was presented at NIFFF in international competition.
Heart to take...
The prince's heart is free... Yet, Elvira (Lea Myren), who drowns in the poems of the king's son and dreams of being able to marry him, has to face a terrible competition, all in a kingdom where beauty seems to reign as implacable mistress. However, she can count on the help of her mother, who sees her daughter's ambition as an unhopeful hope of touching the pactole through a devilly profitable marriage... But Elvira's half-sister, Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Næss), disturbs these Machiavellic plans with its teasing beauty.
A matrix of which we know many versions around the world (Perrault with Cinderella or the Little Glass Slipper, the Grimm brothers with Aschenputtel,...), Cinderella was obviously popularized by Disney with its eponymous version in 1950. With The Ugly StepsisterThe narration is reversed: instead of following the poor Cinderella, we will focus on Elvira, his half-sister less spoiled by nature according to the physical criteria allowed in the kingdom. Criteria that look like the myth of modern beauty, infused with a good dose of capitalist dictates and performative norms... Yet, if Agnes (alias Cinderella) doesn't have to worry too much about this natural beauty that emanates from her, Elvira gets helped with a "small" boost (or rather a hell of a blow of bistouri). Except that at the time, the "beauty-plastic" clinics do not in any way resemble the temples of an aseptic luxury that we are sold today: we went there with the claw, hammer and chopper...
You will understand, The Ugly Stepsister is not a "film in suit" like another. From the beginning, music, editing, cutting and staging bring a shift towards the poncives of this dusty subgenre of cinema. Pulp, modern, rhythmic, the film takes the genre off. Or rather, purge it to get it dirty again afterwards. Indeed, the director will take us to a lubricated, rabid and gore world, to the extremities of malaise that we did not think we would encounter in a Cinderella review. And it's pretty exciting!
... body to be left
Of course, placing the film from the point of view of the one who was "the wicked sister-in-law" allows Emilie Blichfeldt to make a turn three hundred and sixty degrees from the original story. No, the threat, annihilation and amputation (metaphoric, but not that) do not come from a potential rival, on the contrary. The latter would rather be a sister of arms, just as unworked and tempting as well as evil to get out also. Blichfeldt places this threat on another social scale (the prince, understand the upper bourgeoisie) and on another sex, the male. Thus the first fruits of the counterconte are born.
The director breaks the fable to narrate a pulp story but an abyssal blackness, with sometimes barely sustainable scenes. Breaking the narratives to bring out – by the absurd, by the great guignol, by the exaggeration sometimes – the fragments of pure reality, this is his ambition. And The Ugly Stepsister sharing with The Substance an apparent aesthetic and thematic filiation, although any direct influence of one on the other is to be excluded, production schedules making this impossible. There is the same playful gore, the same freshness, the same feeling of sulfate dust removal and the obvious love of the monstrous that emerges in arches of characters finally quite similar, despite diametrically opposed universes.
Build a new imagination
The most interesting thing here is that, unlike Fargeat, Blichfeldt pushes the shift even further. Where the two films share a certain taste for nude scenes and the same feminist message that is obviously not denied, The Substance could not prevent the perpetuation of the ever-destination of these ultra-sexualized female bodies. Blichfeldt on the contrary offers a certain parity to his sexual scenes and does not bother to represent (sometimes very graphically) men. Erection sex, urinating man, young pretending to chase the tail between legs, positions of the « Male » at Blichfeldt are multiple and nudity is not limited to the ultra-erotic representation of female and young bodies, as so often in mainstream cinema... A step in the right direction to diversify genre representations in cinema, in a film where it is particularly relevant!
You will understand well, this rewriting of our myths does not overnight make our imaginations rotate, even those in search of reenchantment. They will not be able to escape much more than others from the washing machine imposed by the multiple machines with status quo. While the pornographic industry is obviously eternally paragon of these emanations and of this a-virtuous transmission cycle, many other models (with the sometimes much more perverse mechanics circulating on the fly in much less sulphurous spheres) continue to complete the maintenance of these dated patterns that should have been forgotten – or at least rewritten – for a long time. The alignment of simmering works in this remodeling enterprise will probably not change overnight a society resolutely ready to start a sacred reactionary turn, but is part of a beginning of collective imagination reconstruction. And that's where it all starts. Let us beware that these films will succeed in dismantling these virilistic and patriarchal myths with the same stern as this remodelled nose with a wooden scissor in The Ugly Stepsister…
That sounds super cool!
And that's why I've already precoed the 4K UHD!
I saw this week and what an excellent surprise I would have liked to have discovered at the movies. Quite a blow in the anthill and a very special tone for a first film. Excellent! And very nice article.