When speaking about what precisely drew her to build a career out of revising classic fairytales by rewriting them as more challenging, mature works (as evident by her timeless masterpiece The Bloody Chamber), Angela Carter essentially described her process as being one of taking these stories shared across generational and geographical boundaries, and underlining that even the most seemingly innocuous and upbeat contained suppressed violence and sexuality, and her efforts were not necessarily to redefine these stories, but rather highlight the hidden truths, challenging power structures (particularly those around the subject of gender and desire) that have been casually upheld by the more sanitised versions we all know. She is certainly not the first person to write more provocative versions of classical fairytales, and she’ll definitely not be the last, but what makes her vision stand out is her belief that these stories were always provocative and unconventional, and that it’s time itself that has caused them to become toothless. However, not everyone who sets out to subvert cherished works is going to be successful, as we can see in the case of The Ugly Stepsister (Norwegian: Den Stygge Stesøsteren), in which Emilie Blichfeldt makes her directorial debut with a film that is infantile at the best of times, profoundly frustrating at the worst. An attempt to redefine Charles Perrault’s “Cinderella” by telling the story of one of the “ugly stepsisters”, who is here named Elvira and presented as some misunderstood young woman whose root of villainy comes from unrealistic beauty standards, the film is a bit of a disaster, an overwrought attempt at doing something unique, but which instead comes across as hopelessly dull and frequently misses the mark in every conceivable way, having some strong visual elements but falling behind in every other way, becoming one of the year’s most annoyingly bland offerings, the kind of shallow, one-dimensional attempt to communicate a message in which the spectacle is the only focus, and everything else is entirely ignored, becoming one of the most reckless excuses for a satire we’ve seen in many years, and just an overall misfire in terms of both content and execution.

The reason “Cinderella” has been such a mainstay as far as popular fairytales tend to go is because it speaks to some common themes with which we are all familiar – the idea of someone being underestimated to the point where their humility and patience result in them being rewarded for their virtue is appealing and plays into our innate desire to be recognised and validated. It’s the classic underdog story that has motivated many of us and given hope that one day, all will fall into place. For whatever reason, Blichfeldt looked at this story and thought that it was fertile ground to extinguish every bit of merit from the original, and rather than focusing on the hard-working but perpetually optimistic Cinderella, she chose instead to look at one of the ugly stepsisters, attempting to humanise them and make them out to be complex characters in their own right. Unfortunately, we sometimes have to admit that not every villain or antagonistic figure needs to be shoehorned into some overly dense morality tale in which they are presented as sympathetic victims of circumstance. It’s perfectly acceptable to just allow a wicked character to remain that way, and there is no prize for being the person who defies centuries of traditions by presenting a usually despicable character as someone who is underpraised and deserves more affection. Everything that made the original story so compelling is entirely removed here – Cinderella becomes a villain, with Elvira being subjected to some of the most heavy-handed, unnatural character development we’ve seen in recent years, where the audience is forced into feeling pity for someone who has chosen to live a fortunate life for the most part, but now also craves the opportunity to be loved, not realising that these stories are binary for a reason. What is clearly an attempt at reworking a classic fairytale into a feminist statement on the unrealistic nature of beauty ideals and how desire can sometimes inspire one to take desperate measures falls flat instantly, being profoundly unlikable and frankly one-dimensional, despite its best efforts.

The only element of The Ugly Stepsister that we can see consistently being praised is the craft, and while it is true that it is handsomely made (the costume design by Manon Rasmussen, as well as the art direction, are wonderful), this is the only aspect that shows any strength, which further underlines the deep flaws of this film, which is narratively and thematically impoverished, to the point of being deeply unsettling in a way that was not ever intended. This is a film that simply does not know what it wants to be, and in the process of trying to find its voice, it loses every bit of potential it had. What starts as a mildly amusing twist on a classical story from our childhood quickly becomes an overly bland, didactic attempt to redefine this fairytale through the most blatantly obvious commentary imaginable. The director seems to have no faith in the audience to be able to use our own common sense to connect the dots, feeling compelled to point out absolutely everything, making The Ugly Stepsister not only very slow but also extremely condescending. It is the most surface-level kind of satire, the one that hands the audience its message on a platter, and holds it in view until the point has been sufficiently hammered in. The attempts at humour are equally atrocious – for a film marketed as a darkly comedic spin on “Cinderella”, it’s remarkably unfunny, to the point where it actually becomes frankly irritating to see how it is reaching for the low-hanging fruit, the most obvious and predictable jokes that are not only wholeheartedly unoriginal but border on being outright painful in many instances. It creates an unnerving atmosphere that never truly reaches any point that feels even vaguely human, and any viewer who can see through the over-the-top style (which in itself grows grating after a certain point) will be able to realise that this film, as striking as it may be, is as narratively impoverished as it is tonally bland, trying to blend dark comedy, body horror and feminist satire into one of the most uninteresting attempts at communicating a complex message that we’ve seen in years.

You would at least hope that the performances in a film like The Ugly Stepsister would offer some reprieve, especially when the role of Elvira, as written, has the potential to be at least partially interesting. Unfortunately, the characterisation in this film is as bad as everything else that surrounds it – the heavy-handed commentary is not elevated by Lea Myren, whose performance as the titular character is dull to the point where we actually have to wonder whether a stronger actor may have been able to make this material at least partially salvageable. To her credit, she does try (and she’s not untalented, as some of her other work clearly shows), but she is also not someone who has the screen presence to convince us towards the authenticity of this character, or at least enough to compensate for the clear narrative deficiencies caused by a lackluster script. Unfortunately, everything we have come to expect from this film falls apart, and the lack of any real character development, despite the film being essentially about transformation and the pursuit of bettering oneself against the odds, only further underlines why The Ugly Stepsister is such a dismal work. The best efforts of not only Myren, but the entire cast (including the usually wonderful Ane Dahl Torp as her mother, Flo Fagerli as her sister and Thea Sofie Loch Næss as this film’s version of the Cinderella character, who is perhaps treated most poorly – a revisionist fairytale should not suddenly be so brutally cruel to other characters just to prove a point) are not enough to salvage a film that never seems to show even the vaguest interest in a subject that could have easily been handled with more elegance and precision when put into the hands of the right filmmaker, rather than labouring through thinly-written archetypes that are both dull and wholeheartedly uninteresting. It never amounts to anything valuable, and eventually just becomes an exercise in banality after a while, which is one of the many reasons we can never abide by this film’s very strange and frankly one-dimensional worldview.

The Ugly Stepsister is a film about how beauty truly is only skin-deep, and that being visually appealing means absolutely nothing when there is a hollowness lurking beneath the surface – this is a lesson the film should have taken into account, since it is both the central thesis statement of this story, and the primary reason the film is a failure. It looks beautiful, but outside of aesthetic appeal, there’s nothing else of value that can come from this film, and I can imagine the only appeal this film will have is to adolescents, who mistake the hackneyed tropes that fuel this film as some profound, mind-altering subversion of conventions, likely the result of never having experienced any of the more nuanced, unique attempts to challenge conventional stories and present them in revised versions. It is unfortunately not a film that feels particularly unique or challenging, and instead serves as the most obvious, surface-level attempt at satire imaginable, the kind of shallow and one-dimensional dark comedy in which the humour is lowbrow and almost inane to the point of actively being quite vulgar – and its not helped by the fact that everyone involved in the film seems to be only putting in partial effort – there’s simply nothing going on beneath the surface, and instead of being a compelling and moving feminist retelling of a classical myth from the perspective of a different character that is never the focus (which could have easily been remedied with the slightest amount of effort), it is a by-the-numbers attempt at creating something bold and nuanced, falling flat almost immediately and never regaining any of the faith we had at the outset. Unfortunately, The Ugly Stepsister is the very definition of style over substance – shallow, uninteresting to the point where we can only feel utterly frustrated. Not even vaguely decent, and instead just a bundle of missed opportunities, it goes absolutely nowhere and proves to be nothing but a complete and utter misfire, both formally and narratively.