Scandinavians (and, in this case, Poles, too) make some good horror films.  They also tend to have some kind of improbably lesbian relationship at the center of them, but The Ugly Stepsister (2025) is a welcome exception.  It still has a feminist message, but that never really takes over the compelling and gruesome story.

It was shamelessly late in the film when I realized, “Oh—this is a retelling of ‘Cinderella.'”  Sometimes retellings of classic fairytales can come off as cheesy and maudlin—consider all of the dark fantasy reinterpretations of Snow White, for example—but this story looks at things from the perspective of Elvira, the elder of the two “ugly stepsisters” from the Cinderella story.  Instead of being cruel and vindictive, however, Elvira is quite sweet and innocent, and Agnes—who will become Cinderella—is not exactly mean, but is not exactly welcoming.

The story opens with Elvira’s mother marrying Agnes’s father.  At dinner that night, Agnes’s father dies suddenly.  Agnes, in her grief, strikes out at Elvira, saying that Agnes’s father would have never married Elvira’s mother if it weren’t for the money.  Elvira’s mother entered the marriage because she was poor, and pretty soon it becomes clear that no one has any cash.

Things are looking bleak until a messenger from the palace arrives, announcing that the Prince will hold a ball, at which he will likely select his future wife.  Elvira is obsessed with the Prince’s romantic poetry, and sees this ball as her chance to win the Prince’s heart.  Elvira’s conniving mother sees it as an opportunity to improve the family’s financial situation:  either Elvira will marry the Prince, or she’ll entice some other eligible bachelor among the nobility or gentry.  Regardless, the family’s monetary woes will be solved.

Of course, Agnes is gorgeous—she looks like the ideal Scandinavian babe—and Elvira, while not exactly ugly, is very plain.  She wears braces and has a big nose.  Elvira’s mother—the “wicked stepmother,” as we shall see—hires an expensive plastic surgeon (or what passes for that profession in what appears to be the early 1700s) to “fix” Elvira’s nose.

Thus the brutal transformation begins.  Elvira’s nose is broken and reset, held in place with a ghastly nose cover strapped around the poor girl’s head.  Elvira is sent to a finishing school, where she competes with Agnes for a top spot among the dance troupe that will perform at the Prince’s ball.  Elvira’s mother bribes the headmistress to ensure Elvira’s spot.

After the nose surgery is a painful success, Elvira’s mother hires the plastic surgeon to widen Elvira’s eyes—another brutal, barbaric surgery, during which Elvira is wide awake.  That said, Elvira emerges as an enticing option for the Prince, and all of her hard, bloody sacrifice (and her mother’s wicked machinations) seem set to pay off at the ball, as the lewd Prince seems quite seduced by Elvira’s dancing and appearance.

Until, of course, Agnes/Cinderella comes in, bedecked in white finery, and captures the heart of the Prince.  Things only escalate from their into a violent denouement, one that sees poor Elvira hacking herself up in a vain attempt to fit into the glass slipper.

Also, during this entire ordeal, Elvira’s stepmother has failed to arrange the funeral for her deceased husband, whose corpse slowly rots in a spare room.  Yikes!

The film very cleverly reframes the Cinderella story.  Agnes/Cinderella is no saint, but she is certainly done wrong in the film.  That said, Elvira is driven to insanity and obsession by her overbearing stepmother, and has sacrificed so much of herself (sometimes quite literally) that it is genuinely heartbreaking to see her still lose out to Cinderella in the end.

I wrote that there is a feminist message here—“don’t butcher yourself to look good for a man”—which is probably a rare good feminist message.  But the deeper story is that of the cruel and manipulative relationship between a mother and daughter, in which the mother bemoans her daughter’s comparative ugliness and harangues and abuses the poor girl.  The sad reality is that such dynamics play out in mother-daughter relationships all the time, just not to such bloody and pathological degrees.  Often, a mother’s concern for her daughter (and her daughter’s prospects in the increasingly savage dating and marriage markets) can lead to all sorts of hang-ups for the girl:  eating disorders, anxiety, depression, etc.  Women are cruelest to each other, and sometimes that includes to their own daughters.

The Ugly Stepsister looks at an extreme example of that kind of casual, albeit sometimes well-intentioned (but not in the case of Elvira’s mother), concern-cum-cruelty.  It’s also a reminder to mothers to practice some introspection when dealing with their vulnerable young daughters, and not to project one’s own ambitions and fears and anxieties onto and into their little girls.