Another journey to Scandinavia leads to an excellent and deeply disturbing movie. This time we have a body horror dark comedy take on the Cinderella story. 

The cinderella story has thousands of variants over countless cultures throughout the centuries. The popular is certainly the Disney version. It’s delightful, sanitized, and lacking in any horror. This is not representative of every version. In fact many of them have very dark motifs and content that would surprise someone only familiar with Disney. 

This version combines some of the more horrific elements of the folk lore along with some deeply disturbing historical facts to create a horrifying new version that has a lot to say about culture, beauty standards, and women’s roles in society. 

The film begins in a familiar fashion. A widow named Rebekka, played by One Dahl Torp, marries a widower named Otto, played by Ralph Carlsson. He has a stunningly beautiful daughter whom everyone admires named Agnes, played by Thea Sofie Loch Naess. She is especially admired by here new stepsister named Elvira, played by Lea Myren. She is self conscious about her looks, and disappears into a fantasy about the Prince of the land named Julian played by Isac Calmroth. 

Otto dies rather suddenly. It turns out that Rebekka was poor and married Otto for his money not knowing that Otto was also broke and was marrying Rebekka for her money. Clearly neither of them did their due diligence or had any long conversations before their nuptials. 

The family is now on the verge of destitution. Rebekka lets Elvira know that she needs to step up and get married quickly before they lose everything. Elvira is romantic and eager to please her domineering mother. Her mother instantly begins critiquing her appearance. She decides that Elvira needs a new nose. 

This was a brutal theme in the film. Poor Elvira is played by a lovely actress. She looks great, but is constantly being called ugly by those around her. Since the audience is in perspective we feel every insult and passive aggressive jab as they come. It is rough. 

Elvira gets her nose done. The film is set in the 1800’s. The costumes are beautiful. The sets are lovely. The nose job? That threw me off. I didn’t think those were around in this time period. I paused the film to go on a quick deep dive into the history of rhinoplasty. It turns out they’ve been around for centuries mostly for medical and reconstructive purposes after injuries. It’s a long and fascinating history, but I found myself wondering, how did they do it in the 1800’s? It turns out the film showed me. I pressed play with dread. A hammer and chisel were the preferred methods back then. A metal device with screws and bolts was the tool used for reshaping the nose to the desired size and shape. It is horrifying and awful to see. 

While her face is slowly changing, there is an invitation from Prince Julian. He is hosting a ball and will be selecting a bride from the young women in attendance. Elvira is desperate to win his hand. She has loved him with school girl crush for years and is now financially motivated to triumph. All the girls are enrolled in a dance school. They will perform for the prince. When Elvira is set to the back row for being too fat and ugly she loses it. 

In her desperation she swallows a tapeworm egg in order to lose weight. She trains in dance harder and harder. I looked up what tapeworms can do to a persons body. It turns out in extreme cases it can be very nasty. And guess what, this movie went with the most extreme depiction. Regardless of the dangers and the pain, Elvira soldiers on. She has a beauty standard to meet and nothing will stop her. 

A very interesting wrinkle in the story comes when Elvira stumbles upon Agnes in the barn in a loving embrace of sorts with a handsome stablehand. When Rebekka finds out the true evil stepmother side of her personality comes out snd she mistreats Agnes awfully. What’s fascinating about this is that no matter how evil she is to her step daughter, it’s hard to say that it’s any worse than what she does to her own daughter. As Elvira suffers, Agnes sees her pain and recognizes it. They bond gently over their shared suffering under this woman. 

Her next torture? False eye lashes. I paused the film to look this up too. I figured they were a modern invention. It turns out they’ve been around for years. It turns out they used to sew human hair directly into the eye lids of young women with needle and thread. They would rub cocaine in the woman’s eyes to dull the pain. The way the film chooses to shoot this scene is both wildly innovative and also the most horrific way possible. This scene almost made me close my eyes. It is unbelievable what women have had and continue to suffer in order to achieve unrealistic standards. If this film doesn’t get you to think about this problem in a new or deeper way, then you aren’t watching it correctly. 

I won’t give away the rest of the movie because the way that it unfolds the tragedy of the story is brutal and shocking especially if you don’t know what happens to the feet that don’t fit the tiny slipper Cinderella leaves behind. Beyond the brutality and the nasty body horror, the story just unfolds in a way that I found very surprising and tragic and beautiful. I’ll never look at the Disney version the same way again.

This film offers a lot to a viewer who is willing to sit through some stomach churning body horror and some stomach churning parenting. It will upset you. It upset me deeply. The lengths to which people will go was very scary. If that sounds scary to you, then you will be scared. It was a very different kind of horror movie, and one I’m very glad I watched in spite of the horror. I highly recommend it if you have the stomach for it. 

It was my cup of tea. A