The Ugly Stepsister Is The Substance For Disney Adults
Sundance’s disturbing fantasy reclaims body horror in a major way.
Classic Disney cartoons have become a universal language for generations of movie lovers; the new blueprint for the fairytales and legends that define our public imagination. The idea of their happily ever after is so enmeshed in our minds that anything to the contrary — like, say, the stories that Disney originally adapted — feels like a divergence from true canon.
In reality, though, the tales of Cinderella, Snow White, and the Little Mermaid were gruesome, tragic affairs. Their authors were acutely aware of how cruel the world could be: even the stories that end “happily” are punctuated with body horror and blurred lines of consent. Prince Charming is rarely all he’s cracked up to be, making our heroines’ excruciating transformations all the more pointless. With our public tastes shifting from unconditional optimism back to meta-modern cynicism, Hans Christian Anderson and the Brothers Grimm feel oddly prescient today.
If Coralie Fargeat proved anything with The Substance last year, it’s that we’re all unhappy subjects of the unyielding patriarchy. Women of all ages contort themselves to accommodate an impossible beauty standard, chasing dreams that might not even be their own. It’s a tale as old as time, but in The Ugly Stepsister — a grim retelling of the original Cinderella story — another tragic fable takes on a surprisingly modern, delightfully gory bent.
The Ugly Stepsister takes body horror back to the 19th century, but it still manages to feel modern.
Cinderella is one of the oldest fairytales there is, with its earliest versions dating back to 7 B.C. It’s been adapted by countless authors, but the Brothers Grimm were the first to introduce more macabre elements to the story. Cinderella’s ugly stepsisters became cautionary tales: not only did they mutilate their bodies in an attempt to fit the iconic glass slipper, but Cinderella’s woodland friends plucked out their eyes to teach them a crucial lesson about vanity. Their plight isn’t one we’re taught to think too intently about — but in writer-director Emilie Blichfeldt’s gruesome retelling, the eldest stepsister, Elvira (Lea Myren), is a tragic figure worthy of our sympathy, not our disgust.
Elvira is introduced as a naive, well-meaning girl with her head in the clouds. She spends most of her time poring over a collection of poems supposedly written by a neighboring prince (Isac Calmroth). Her fantasies about marrying him are a series of pink-washed, synth-soundtracked dream sequences. Apart from her garish hairstyle (done up in crunchy Victorian ringlets), her fuller figure, or the braces lining her teeth, there’s not all that much separating her from Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Næss), her blonde, blue-eyed, beautiful stepsister. She just needs a little help to grow into the kind of girl that can turn heads — and once Agnes’ father dies, leaving the family penniless, Elvira’s mother Rebekka (Ane Dahl Torp) wastes no time putting that theory to the test.
The Ugly Stepsister is not for those who found themselves wincing at any of The Substance’s ventures into body horror and gore. Blichfeldt may employ some period-appropriate restraint in adapting the same themes, but she finds other ways to make our skin crawl. Rebekka has just a few months to transform Elvira into marriage material: Prince Julian is searching for a wife, and plans to select his future princess at an upcoming ball. And back then, options were limited, not to mention gruesome.
It begins with a 19th-century nose job, performed by an eccentric French doctor (Adam Lundrgen) who seems to delight in the adage “beauty is pain.” To lose weight, Elvira receives a tapeworm egg from the headmistress of her finishing school, along with an antidote to take at a later date. As sweets are her weakness, Elvira relishes in this procedure most of all: she can eat as much as she wants while the worm eats away at her from the inside. Naturally, this and other recourses will come back to bite in gruesome fashion — but The Ugly Stepsister takes its time playing with our sense of dread. As Elvira grows thinner and more beautiful, her stomach growls all the louder, a signal of a sickening reveal coming around the corner.
The patriarchy is a prison for each character in The Ugly Stepsister, making for a horror story that’s as psychological as it is visceral.
Elvira’s unnatural transformation isn’t the only thing designed to give us pause. Blichfeldt is keen to explore how each of her female characters are affected by their oppressive society. Rebekka, a widow twice over, has no choice but to sell her body to pay for Elvira’s many procedures. Agnes, meanwhile, schemes to escape her new family in her own way — even as she entertains advances from a local stable boy. And Elvira’s younger sister Alma (Flo Fagerli) watches the drama unfold in shock and dismay. The estate’s resident tomboy, she stands on the precipice of womanhood — but she has no interest in changing any part of herself. She’s not quite the Jo March of this story, but her interactions with Elvira do supply The Ugly Stepsister with something that The Substance lacked: not just a voice of reason, but a glimmer of hope for the future.
For all its timely flourishes, this story is still a cautionary tale. Those familiar with the Grimms’ version of events know what’s in store for Elvira, and eventually Agnes, as Prince Julian’s ball approaches. Neither of our heroines get a true happy ending, at least not in the traditional sense. Blichfeldt still interprets the prince as a skeevy figure, casting a shadow over anyone’s scheme to secure a marriage with him. It makes Agnes’ ultimate goal pretty bittersweet, and Elvira’s increasingly desperate attempts to win Julian’s favor — which includes the mutilation of her own foot and a nausea-inducing resurgence of the tapeworm — even harder to abide. Fortunately, The Ugly Stepsister also isn’t without a sense of humor. It may not venture much deeper than The Substance in its critique on beauty standards and patriarchal prisons, but it goes to great lengths to reclaim the sadness (and the silliness) in a story we thought we knew.
