It all started with Norwegian filmmaker Emilie Blichfeldt envisioning a bloody shoe.
“I’ve been working on female characters that are struggling with their bodies through my short films,” she says. “It was in the development process of one of these films that I was having a creative nap, and suddenly this little piece of the Brothers Grimm version of ‘Cinderella‘ came to me. I just imagined my character thinking that she fit the shoe, but then realizing that her shoe was full of blood. She’d actually cut off her toes to fit the shoe.”
This dark spin on the classic lore was the first step of Blichfeldt’s “The Ugly Stepsister,” which is debuting at Sundance on Thursday via Shudder. Blichfeldt, who wrote and directed the feature, wanted to explore the story not from Cinderella’s viewpoint but rather from that of her eternally maligned stepsisters. In her story, Elvira (Lea Myren) undergoes several stomach-churning procedures to attain the beauty she believes she needs to marry Prince Julian (Isac Calmroth). These include eating a tapeworm, sewing in eyelashes and a barbaric rhinoplasty.
Blichfeldt says she quickly felt empathy for the previously one-dimensional Elvira.
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“I had never before felt a connection with this character,” she says. “I also grew up thinking that they were horrible and empathizing with Cinderella, hoping that I was that girl. But suddenly it just hit: I’ve spent a lot of time trying to fit in too-small shoes, and also struggling with image and desperately dreaming that I would fit within the beauty standards. When I rediscovered this character as an adult, it was striking because she’s the character that I’ve been up until this point. I’m still very interested in showing different kinds of women on screen, mirroring the visceral experience of having a body as a woman.”
Beyond historically accurate medical procedures and story elements that never made it into Disney’s cheery 1950 “Cinderella” (which, of course, doesn’t include the stepsisters mutilating their feet, like the Brothers Grimm version), Blichfeldt believed that ratcheting up the body horror was a natural fit to get her message across. Her love of filmmakers who deal in darkness, like David Cronenberg and Dario Argento, inspired her to create her own nauseating visual language.
“I knew from the get-go it was going to be a body horror, which got me so excited because I had gotten into it a few years prior,” she says. “It also has a commercial aspect to it, which I think is amazing, because then I can potentially reach a large audience. At the same time, I knew I would be able to fill that story with my perspectives and tastes.”
Blichfeldt’s in-depth research of 18th-century medical procedures, coupled with extensive storyboarding, made for some of the film’s most extreme sequences. Her litmus to make sure these moments were successful?
“If I’m not grossed out, it’s not good enough,” Blichfeldt says. “Body horror is so much about the audience empathizing with the character, being in that moment with them. I’ve always used myself as the first audience in the work, because there are things that can get lost. With the wrong editing or wrong sound design, you can lose that feeling. So I’m always using myself first, even now that I’ve seen it 50 times.”
Cinderella herself is also afforded more agency than in previous depictions. Presented in this telling as Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Naess), the character is much more savvy about the world than Elvira. Notably, even though Prince Julian is vocal that his search for a bride is limited to virgins, Agnes has a literal roll in the hay early on with a worker on the estate. Yet her sexuality does not make her a target of derision or, ultimately, harm her chances with the Prince.
“It was an instinct I had that was true for her, and points back to the contrast between the two characters,” Blichfeldt says. “Elvira is at this very pure place, and she does not know anything about sex. She’s very naive and learns so much through the movie, while Cinderella has this natural relationship. She’s self-confident and does not have problems with her own actions. I thought [the sex scene] really made her human and perfect in a very different way than I’ve ever seen Cinderella. I think it’s a perfect moment, a natural moment, an innocent moment. It even surprised me as a storyteller. I had to be more open and more curious about her after I found that moment.”
“The Ugly Stepsister” has its Sundance debut in the middle of a rousing awards campaign for Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance,” another body horror film that satirizes cosmetic surgery and beauty standards. Blichfeldt lights up when discussing Fargeat, as well as the feminist body horror of director Julia Ducournau, as illustrated in her 2021 film “Titane” and 2016’s “Raw.”
“Being a woman is a very bodily experience,” Blichfeldt says. “Although we are emancipated for the most part in the Western world, the cultural expectations are still rooted in the thousand-years-long story of being the object. I think that’s why we are so attracted to body horror. It’s great for metaphors or just showing what it can feel like to live the female bodily experience. It’s just so exciting, and the reason why it gets the attention it does is because people have the same reaction as we do.”