25/02/2025 - BERLINALE 2025: Norwegian filmmaker Emilie Blichfeldt's debut is a grotesque yet faithful retelling of the Cinderella fairy tale, updated for modern mores

Rewriting classic fairy tales to privilege their darker elements isn’t a current trend, so much as a constant. Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty et al never risk falling out of fashion, or even seem politically incorrect by contemporary tastes – instead, they’re malleable enough to absorb our present-day anxieties, even if their narrative shape and characterisations feel a bit slender. The second of these, Cinderella, is not the most popular for adaptation; so, inspired mainly by the Brothers Grimm’s 1812 version, Emilie Blichfeldt has made The Ugly Stepsister, privileging the perspective of the story’s overlooked side character, and excelling in a tone of Cronenbergian body horror for its narrative arc, and 1960s-1970s Central European gothic for its atmosphere. Blichfeldt’s always steady craftsmanship offsets how she struggles investing this old bedtime-story warhorse with a novel element of surprise. The film world-premiered at Sundance before its bow in the Berlinale’s Panorama.

In the quaintly fabricated kingdom of “Swedlandia”, medieval, early-modern and 19th-century design elements all merge, and Prince Julian (Isac Calmroth) is a Chalamet-like heartthrob whose new poetry publications besot the land’s girls as if they were his latest Instagram thirst trap. In one mouldering castle, Otto (Ralph Carlsson) has remarried Rebekka (Ane Dahl Torp, who also shone in the festival’s Golden Bear winner, Dreams (Sex Love) [+see also:
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No question, what ensues will likely be more relatable and cathartic for women-identifying and transfeminine people than men: the inspection and sometimes degradation of the self to reach an unstable beauty standard, also recently seen in The Substance [+see also:
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As said, Blichfeldt gets much right in her debut feature: she wields an undeniable irony, as the characters willingly contribute to their own downfall, making the audience today marvel at their gullibility, yet maintains a seriousness and discipline in tone, creating more in common with elevated horrors like The Witch [+see also:
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film profile], than midnight-movie camp. Still, The Ugly Stepsister feels two or three ideas short of fully provoking us and expanding upon the story’s familiar outline, yet creditably, Elvira is never betrayed by the filmmaker as a target of sadism or as a wholly passive figure – she’s every woman, or every person, hypnotised into living up to an ideal, where the final outcome is hopefully a more robust kind of maturity, with no deceptive “happily ever afters”.

The Ugly Stepsister is a production by Norway, Sweden, Poland and Denmark, staged by Mer Film in co-production with Lava Films, Zentropa Sweden and Motor Productions. Its world sales are overseen by Paradise City Sales.