The Ugly Stepsister

A pair of bloody dancing shoes

The Ugly Stepsister (Den stygge stesøsteren) started life as a film about a woman with a talking vulva. Then writer/director Emilie Blichfeldt decided to come at the same idea – the onerous demands put on young women – by taking a second run at the Cinderella fairy tale. The resulting debut feature introduces a really gifted director to a wider audience, though the film itself could learn a lesson from Cinderella herself – it’s the dainty foot that gets into the glass slipper, not the galumphing one. It’s the same story, just slanted so we see it from the point of view of the loser – in this case Elvira (Lea Myren), the … Read more