Format: Streaming video from Hulu on Fire!
I genuinely appreciate the fact that horror movies are starting to get attention when it comes to award season. In the past, a horror movie getting a nomination for anything was a shock, and a lot of those nominations were for categories like special effects. There’s been more respect for the genre, especially in the last couple of years, and that respect has shown up in nominations across the spectrum. Such a case is the nomination for Makeup and Hairstyling for The Ugly Stepsister (or Den stygge stesøsteren if you want the Norwegian title).
And don’t get it twisted; The Ugly Stepsister is very much a horror movie. It’s also a sort of fantasy romance and a very dark comedy, but this is body horror before it’s anything else, and it goes to some very uncomfortable places. The fact that this comes from a tradition of a classic fairy tale only makes this that much more effective.
This is a dark version of Cinderella, but told from the perspective of one of her stepsisters. Rebekka (Ane Dahl Torp) has been widowed and left with two homely daughters, Elivra (Lea Myren) and Alma (Flo Fagerli). She marries a widower named Otto (Ralph Carlsson), who has a beautiful daughter named Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Næss). Otto dies suddenly, leaving the widow and the three girls destitute. Their hope for salvation is that the prince (Isac Calmroth) is looking for a wife from the virgins in the area. While Agnes is clearly the beauty, Rebekka’s hope is that she can make Elvira the true prize.
To that end, Elvira is subjected to a number of horrifying tortures to beautify her, including the equivalent of a medieval nose job and eye surgery. At the behest of the woman in charge of her finishing school, she ingests a tapeworm egg, all in the hope of losing weight to make herself more attractive, but the stress and lack of nutrition causes her hair to start falling out. Meanwhile, Agnes has her own designs on the prince, but is also covertly having sex with Isak (Malte Myrenberg Gårdinger), the family stableboy.
What makes The Ugly Stepsister different is where it is focused. In the Cinderella story that everyone is familiar with, the stepmother and the two stepsisters are ugly both outside and in. They are mean and cruel, and we are naturally going to side with the innocent and likeable Ella forced to live in squalor and servitude. The Ugly Stepsister presents Elvira as something of an innocent. She’s cruel at times, but it feels more like she is at times almost as a sort of lashing out at her stepsister’s beauty, and most of the time, she’s merely doing what someone else tells her to do. Elvira, aside from her desire for the prince, is kind of a cipher. She is what other people tell her to be, not really able to make her own decisions. There is a sad quality to her because she just wants to please her mother and to have someone actually praise her for anything.
It’s also interesting to see the Cinderella character—Agnes—be someone completely unsympathetic. We’re not cheered by her being put in rags or forced to tend to her sisters, but she is not actually a very nice person in her own right. Sure, she has her own sadness and pain, but coming from the perspective we are, she is more or less depicted as a goal for Elvira to strive for, not as a person who has feelings.
It’s the mother who is truly awful, of course, forcing these tortures on Elvira, abusing Agnes, and essentially ignoring Alma. It comes up several times in the movie that her efforts in reforming Elvira into a beauty has forced her to put all of the money into those efforts, leaving her husband unburied and rotting in a back room of the house.
There are a few things to bring up. First, I love the Oscar nomination. It was well deserved. The tendency is to look at categories like Hair and Makeup as being about style and beauty. It’s that here at times, but it’s also about some truly horrific moments that look real. Second, I want to offer a lot of praise for the overall style. This is director Emilie Blichfeldt’s first feature-length film and it shows a confidence and maturity that is surprising in someone without much experience.
This is Lea Myren’s film to carry, and she does it beautifully. Much of the film sees her acting with a massive prosthetic on her nose, not dissimilar to what Nicholson wore in Chinatown, but a lot bigger and clunkier. Myren still comes through in her scenes, still emotes, despite the thing on her face. This is her first starring role, and based on this, I hope she has a long and interesting career. She has the talent for it.
All of this is true, but that doesn’t mean that you should rush into The Ugly Stepsister. This is a film that does not hold back with the body horror. There are multiple scenes that are painful to watch. If you know the original Grimm Brothers version of the story, the eye surgery makes sense, as does what happens with Elivra’s feet, but that doesn’t change the fact of having to watch it happen. There is also a sequence with the tapeworm that goes longer than you think it will. The fact that you are now expecting that scene to be uncomfortably long does not change the fact that it will go on longer than you expect.
The Ugly Stepsister is a hell of a watch, but be warned. If you shy away from body horror at all, shy away from this as well.
Why to watch The Ugly Stepsister: A new take on Cinderella.
Why not to watch: Eyes, feet, meat cleaver, tapeworm.
No comments:
Post a Comment