The Norwegian writer-director Emilie Blichfeldt roasts conventional heroines and female beauty standards in this gruesome, hilarious reworking of Cinderella. Elvira (Lea Myren) is a poignantly plain, slightly awkward teenager who moves to the kingdom of Swedlaia when her mother, Rebekka (Ane Dahl Torp), marries a wealthy widower.
Unhappily, he drops dead into dessert just as his new wife learns that he is as broke as she is. His beautiful but sour daughter, Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Naess), is relegated to the scullery as the desperate Rebekka leaves her late husband’s corpse to rot and redirects the funeral expenses to prepare Elvira.
The girl will attend a ball where the prince (Isac Calmroth) will choose his wife from the kingdom’s virgins. Thus begins a series of brutal surgical interventions from Dr Esthétique (Adam Lundgren). Her nose is smashed and refashioned. Long and lush eyelashes are sewn wincingly into her lids. “You’re changing your outside to fit what you know is on the inside,” Elvira’s mentor explains. The girl swallows a tapeworm that produces alarming noises in her gut but allows her to eat cake. She stumbles her way through ballet and poise lessons.
It’s impossible not to think of The Substance, another feminist Cronenbergian gut-punch, watching Blichfeldt put the “grim” back in the Brothers Grimm with a series of revolting close-ups of body modifications, maggots and moulting.
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Inevitably, Elvira learns that her intended is nothing like the purple poetry he publishes. That doesn’t matter to the secretly carnal Agnes, whose graphic sexual adventures further skewer the film’s fairy-tale origins. With the practicality of a Jane Austen heroine, she informs her stablehand lover that she will marry the Prince. And they all undoubtedly live unhappily ever after.
In cinemas from Friday, April 25th
