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FILM
“Cinderella”
Director: Lisa Marie Gamlem
Norway – 2024
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No one can claim that too few Christmas films are made here at home, which nowadays are produced on such a generous scale that it is in danger of matching the number of war films. Here comes one more: a computer-animated Christmas adventure directed by Lisa Marie Gamlem, who has previously been behind “Grandmother and the Eight Children” (2013) and “Captain Sabertooth and the Treasure in Lama Rama” (2014). She is also listed as the director of the computer animation “Cinderella and the Donkey Helpers”, which is reportedly in production.
“Cinderella” has the kind of high concept you might find in a Pixar film: a reconstruction of the classic folk tale about Cinderella, which explores metaphysical ideas around free will, self-determination and the extent to which we can change our own destiny. Themes that are probably far too complicated for young children “Cinderella” is, after all, coined, and unfortunately works far better in the idea stage than as a finished film. As a technical craft, I can’t honestly claim that “Cinderella” stands out significantly from the horde of European flash-in-the-wool computer animations targeting the international children’s film market, or that there is any Norwegian distinctiveness to be traced here.
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It is perhaps worth noting that the user reviews on Filmweb are dominated by prejudiced scumbags, who have given “Cinderella” a bottom rating because it is allegedly “LGBTQ+ propaganda aimed at 6-year-olds” and “highly sexualised”. For those of us who are total pacifist rejects in the conservative culture war, it is a little difficult to understand why two computer-animated animal girls who fall in love deserve to arouse such fury, but there is very little in the world that makes particular sense right now.
The retelling of the traditional fairy tale about “Cinderella” is already done in the prologue. So yes, there once was a cat girl named Cinderella (voiced by Ada Eide). After she lost her father, Cinderella was forced to be a maid to her evil stepmother and her stepdaughter, but thanks to her indomitable spark of life she still made it to the castle ball. So far, so Disney. But in this version of the fairy tale, Cinderella rejects the proposal from the prince (Sondre Lerche). They’re not in love, she’s not that interested in getting married and that’s just the way it is. Good luck going forward.
The prince does not handle being rejected very well, and becomes really furious. He captures Cinderella and demands that they live happily ever after, whether she wants to or not. Cinderella is thrown into a dungeon together with her faithful, talking horse Jurasek (Kristofer Hivju), awaiting a trial where she stands accused of “fairy tale avoidance”. Everyone takes it for granted that they just have to follow the story, but Cinderella has heard rumors of an alternate version of this fairy tale that has a completely different ending.
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The arrogant king Rex (Vidar Magnussen) is not going to accept that Cinderella can do something like that, because it means that everyone can just do what they want in time and out of time. Total chaos and pure anarchy. The judge decides that Cinderella will have three days to find her fairy tale, but if she can’t, the wedding will go ahead as planned. The prince’s anxious little sister Louise (Eili Harboe) has trained all her life for her role as the official princess of the pea, and tries desperately to live up to the family’s strict expectations. She fears what will happen to the kingdom if Cinderella discovers this alternate adventure, and sets out to the history archive to find it before her – so that the book can be destroyed.
While the princess does her best to sabotage Cinderella’s adventure hunt, they gradually become good friends and develop warm feelings for each other. The problem is that Cinderella’s stubbornness is already changing the adventure, causing the entire Wonderland matrix to crumble to its foundations. Too far up in the clouds, two gods of adventure sit and indifferently observe everything together, while they pull a lever that can wipe out the whole world if someone breaks the established rules of the game. The aim here is obviously to tell a postmodern, progressive and slightly feminist meta-reinterpretation of the classic folk tale, where Cinderella fights for control over her own destiny and falls in love with the princess rather than the prince.
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That in itself is easy to appreciate. The script (by Karsten Fullu, Martin Lund and Mina Juni Stenebråten) has a fresh approach and some inventive ideas, even if everything feels a little underdeveloped, undigested and the internal logic jarring. If the citizens of Fairyland know that they are only acting out fixed roles in an already told fairy tale, how can they have any kind of will of their own? And how can a Bergen moose king have a biological fox daughter with a Stavanger dialect, by the way? Many questions, nice few answers. But what unfortunately really strains the legs of “Cinderella” is the low technical quality of the computer animation, which is outsourced to the Spanish studio Tomavision.
Backgrounds and lighting generally look OK, but the primitive, personality-deprived character animation and dead-eyed, stiff facial expressions suggest that “Cinderella” was staged with very limited resources at its disposal. I have no idea if the problems are due to an excessively low budget, a tight deadline or the Spanish animation studio’s lack of experience, but I have to admit that the film looks downright confusing at times – most reminiscent of the cut-scenes of a twenty-year-old PC budget game for small children . So while it’s easy to admire the level of ambition and the attempt to do something new with a well-used story, it’s unfortunately hard to claim that the result is particularly successful.