The Ugly Stepsister

Rebekka recently married and became a stepmother, but her marriage is a transactional one that, in this fairy tale, turns out to have been built on false pretenses. When the bridegroom dies right after the wedding, he leaves behind no money. He does, however, leave behind a large house and his beautiful daughter, Agnes (/Cinderella). This means that the newlywed Rebekka, who herself has two nearly adult daughters and has reached her "best before" date in the marriage market, must cultivate a new commodity within the family. Since the youngest daughter is not yet marriage-ready, it is Elvira—the film's protagonist—who must be prepared for the task. But Elvira is the ugly stepsister, and she must therefore undergo a series of transformations in aesthetics and etiquette to become worthy of being "wife material." Things proceed quite brutally in the beautiful salons for cosmetic surgery, dance, and deportment in the antiquated fairy-tale land of Swedlandia.

The Ugly Stepsister is a feminist body horror where the beautiful and the grotesque go hand-in-hand. There are no good fairies, birds, or nuts here to conjure magic. Beauty hurts, both in reality and in this retelling.

Read Anne Gjelsvik's analysis at Montages.