Norwegian director Emilie Blichfeldt makes her feature debut with an ingenious revisionist body-horror version of Cinderella, lavishly costumed and designed. There are twists in the style of David Cronenberg and Walerian Borowczyk, with (maybe inevitably) echoes of Carrie and Alien. In one scene, there could even be a nod to Picnic at Hanging Rock.
Cynical widow Rebekka (Ane Dahl Torp) remarries a well-heeled widower somewhere in 18th-century central Europe; he then makes her a widow for the second time by fatally gorging on cake at the wedding breakfast. As a result, Rebekka is left financially embarrassed with her plain daughter Elvira (Lea Myren), Elvira’s kid sister Alma (Flo Fagerli) and a new stepdaughter Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Naess), a beautiful young woman who haughtily resents the ugly Elvira. Instead of paying for a funeral for her late husband, Rebekka lets his body rot somewhere in the house while spending money on bizarre cosmetic treatments for Elvira – brutal nose- and eyelash-remodelling – in the hope that Prince Julian (Isac Calmroth) will choose her for his bride at his forthcoming ball. But Elvira rashly swallows a tapeworm to allow her to indulge a passion for cakes (Ozempic not being available in those days) and calamity approaches.
Amusingly, Blichfeldt upends expectations about which of the two female leads truly is the cruel and vain stepsister, and which therefore has the authentic inner beauty. As with the original version, there is a plot hole with regard to the trying-on-the-slipper scene: surely the Prince can see from faces who is, and is not, his true love. Or … maybe it isn’t a plot hole? Perhaps the body-appendage fetishism taking precedence over facial recognition is the point. This is a movie hyper-aware of the sexual and patriarchal imagery of Cinderella, a film in the post-feminist tradition of Angela Carter and, unlike Michael Pataki’s lowbrow 1977 porn-musical version, it avoids the obvious sexual symbolism of the foot in the slipper. Blichfeldt has made an elegant debut.
• The Ugly Stepsister is in US cinemas now, and UK and Irish cinemas from 25 April
