The reading
The bead. A girl told all her life to hide what she is finally stops concealing and lets it out — and the love that saves the day turns out to be a sister's, not a suitor's.
Engines
- liberation/autonomy · content · spine · ~ — Elsa's arc is the throwing-off of an imposed constraint: "conceal, don't feel, don't let them know" gives way to "Let It Go," the caged self released. The payout the audience buys is the constraint cast off — even as the film then complicates whether unfettered release is safe.
- belonging · content · also-runs · ~ — the sisters' bond; "an act of true love" pointedly reframed from romantic to familial — Anna's sacrifice for Elsa, the family restored.
The bundle. A liberation spine with a sisterly-belonging payoff — the modern Disney move of swapping the romantic true-love receipt for a familial one.
Dual-use read. Liberation's counterfeit is "break free / be your authentic self" sold as a slogan or a product — freedom as a purchasable identity. Frozen mostly enables (the freedom is real and is then re-integrated with love and responsibility), but "Let It Go" lifts cleanly out of the film as a pure anthem of unfettered self-expression, the register a shallower telling would stop at.
Verdict. A liberation spine resolved by belonging — the constraint thrown off, then the self rejoined to the sister it was hiding from.
Evidence. ~ reviewed — from the film (in-copyright).