Cinderella's stepsister triumphs in the Sitges Kingdom of Terror

SilosOnce upon a time, there was a festival where the stories were violent nightmares of blood and guts, and the protagonists were subjected to torture and amputations. In Sitges, the small kingdom of terror in Garraf, it was crowned best film this Saturday. The Ugly Stepsister, which reinterprets the Cinderella story from the perspective of the ugly stepsister, subjected to a hell of primitive aesthetic treatments to be the prettiest girl at the prince's ball. The jury, chaired by American filmmaker Mary Harron, awarded the film by Norwegian director Emilie Blichfeldt, a debutant who thus becomes the fifth director to triumph at the festival after Sally Potter (Orlando, 1993), Jennifer Lynch (Surveillance, in 2008), Karyn Kusama (The invitation, in 2015) and Veronika Franz, who beat her last year by The Devil's Bath (co-directed with Severin Fiala).

A The Ugly Stepsister, which opened in theaters this Friday, Elvira (a spectacular Lea Myren, a debuting actress who follows the trail) must compete with her more attractive stepsister to win over the prince, the only solution in sight to the family's financial problems. Aware of the girl's disadvantage, her mother takes her to a cosmetic surgeon who applies forceful methods that Elvira accepts without opposition, a victim of an aesthetic pressure that has convinced her of her ugliness. Her path to the heart of the prince (a hooligan with poetic pretensions) is a crescendo of torture, most of it self-inflicted, that seems to have no end.

Filmed with warm lighting and pastel colors that enhance the timelessness of the story – and the contrast with the violence of physical torture – the film is part of the new trend of titles such as The substance that use body horror to show the open wounds of patriarchy in the female flesh. Blichfeldt also plays with fairy tale archetypes and twists them with subversive intent: here Cinderella is forbidden to go to the ball because she has been caught making love to one of the servants and, of course, sees the prince only as a means to regain her privileges and escape poverty.

Young audiences connect with the most subversive film

The second highest recognition of the list of winners, the Special Jury Prize, was shared between them ex aequo Two of the sensations of this edition. The first is the frenetic Hong Kong action film The furious, a spectacular collection of fight choreography in which the star is not Kenji Tanigaki's effective direction but the incredible work of the actors, martial arts professionals. The second Special Jury Prize went to the playful Obsession, by Curry Barker, a pitch-black comedy gore In which a shy young man's desire to be loved by the girl he likes comes true and transforms the lives of both into a nightmare; it is not surprising that this subversive challenge to the codes of the rom-com indie also take home the Audience and Young Jury Awards, as it is the film that connected most immediately and viscerally with the Sitges audience.

The award for Best Director for maestro Park Chan-wook is unappealable, but at the same time insufficient: the film is an exercise in staging superior to any other work seen at the festival. However, it is understandable that the jury wanted to place it below films by less established filmmakers of the director ofOld boy, which already won at Sitges in 2004. Another of these emerging directors could be the Thai Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke, winner of the award for best script and the critics' award for best debut film for the surreal comedy of reincarnations, A useful ghost.

And as for the award for best actress, the Sitges jury did the same as the Berlinale jury and awarded it to Rose Byrne: she is the best of the black comedy about a mother on the edge. If I could, I'd kick you.The award for best actor went to the boys who star in the horror drama about bullying. The plague. Important films of the festival are left out of the official list of winners, such as Chuck's Life by Mike Flanagan or Reflection on a dead diamond, by Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani, which the critics' jury considered to be the best films of the festival.