Emilie Blichfeldt‘s blistering feature film debut, The Ugly Stepsister, is already hurtling towards a kind of cult status, pretty synonymous with the welcomed influx of beauty standard motion pictures. And ones made by women. Anne Catherine Sauerberg and Thomas Foldberg‘s surprising (not for me), but utterly deserving Academy Award nomination this year for Best Makeup and Hairstyling is a huge bloody stamp on the success of these indie flicks. As well as demonstrating how broad the Academy have thankfully become over the years – seeping into genres and international cinema more than ever before.
The Makeup category at the Oscars has tended to be the place for ‘horror’ from the early breakout days of An American Werewolf in London and The Fly, through the likes of Beetlejuice and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, to Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events and Pan’s Labyrinth. And then last year, The Substance, a film on a very similar discourse won the Oscar. As it stands this year, populist picks like Frankenstein and Sinners might be considered heavyweights over Kokuho or The Smashing Machine, but The Ugly Stepsister now has its claws in what can be a much more competitive little race.
Forget the Best Picture race for a while, for today we discuss the Makeup and Hairstyling category. I spoke to the nominees, Anne Catherine and Thomas, as well as the filmmaker, Emilie, all fresh off this exhilarating Oscar nomination for The Ugly Stepsister.
