Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Coralie Fargeat
Starring: Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid, Hugo Diego Garcia
Seven years after she rehabilitated the disreputable rape-revenge genre by
leaning into its excesses with her debut
Revenge, French writer/director Coralie Fargeat has made her English
language debut with The Substance, bringing Demi Moore back into the spotlight with what might be her
career best performance, and certainly her most daring.
Fargeat's second film is an initially ingenious body-horror that borrows
elements from a variety of sources -
The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Wasp Woman, All About Eve, Seconds,
Tootsie
- only to ultimately mash them into a mushy, inedible paste in a Frank
Henenlotter blender. It's a love letter to b-movies, but one that is
desperate to be seen as an important prestige production with "something to
say", and at 140 minutes it could certainly learn a lot about economical
storytelling from the filmmakers its aping (Roger Corman only needed 66
minutes to do all this with The Wasp Woman).
Fargeat opens with her film with a bravura sequence that displays exactly
the sort of economy that's absent from the film that follows. From an
overhead shot we watch a time-lapse of a star being laid on the Hollywood
walk of fame, initially greeted by flashing camera bulbs and clamouring
tourists, only to fade with the seasons as it becomes covered in ketchup
stains. It's a sequence that only takes a minute to make the same point that
will be stretched out over the following 139.
For at least half of those 139 minutes we're dazzled by Fargeat's ingenuity
as she presents us with an idea that might borrow from previous sources but
is wholly original. The walk of fame star belongs to our protagonist,
Elizabeth Sparkle (Moore), a one-time Oscar winning actress who pivoted to
hosting a morning fitness show (it's as though Jane Fonda had decided to
quit acting and focus on her workout videos). On her 50th birthday Elizabeth
receives the news from her on-the-nose-named sleazy producer Harvey (Dennis Quaid) that she is to be replaced. The network wants a younger woman to take
over her show.
While being treated for injuries sustained in a car crash (she was
distracted at the wheel by seeing her image being removed from a billboard),
Elizabeth is examined by a shady doctor who suggests she's the perfect
candidate for an experimental treatment called "The Substance." From a video
contained on the USB the doctor presented her with, Elizabeth learns exactly
what "The Substance" involves. It's a process that will allow her to give
birth to a new, younger version of herself. The catch is that she can only
inhabit this body every other week. So for one week she will be her
50-year-old self, the next week her younger self, and so on. Agreeing to
take part, Elizabeth is directed to a warehouse hidden away in a seedy part
of town, where a box awaits her. The box is a perfect parody of the sort you
might receive from some hipster start-up company, containing basic
instructions spelled out in massive fonts and a variety of tools and food
packages. The initial birthing of Elizabeth's younger alter-ego (which
adopts the name Sue and is played by Margaret Qualley) is a striking
piece of body-horror, with Sue literally emerging from Elizabeth's body in
an effect not unlike that seen in the recent Aussie horror
The Demon Disorder.
Leaving Elisabeth's lifeless body on the bathroom floor, Sue heads out into
the world determined to make the most of her new body. Pulling a Tootsie,
Sue auditions for the role of Elizabeth's replacement and wins over the
drooling Harvey, who not only gives her the job but agrees to allow her to
take every other week off so she can "look after her sick mom."
What follows is a classic "Be careful what you wish for" horror narrative
of the type you might find in the pages of an EC comic or as the segment of
a horror anthology (it bears some similarities to the "Hair" portion of John
Carpenter's Body Bags). Fargeat's storytelling is somewhat confusing on this point, but it
eventually becomes clear that Sue has her own consciousness separate from
Elizabeth, and resents having to regress to a limp figure every other week.
This raises the question of what Elizabeth is getting from "The Substance"
if she can't share any of Sue's experiences, or even remember them.
Frustratingly, it's something the film refuses to address. As Sue rebels and
overstays her time, Elizabeth's body begins to rapidly age like a fleshy
portrait of Dorian Gray.
It's at this point that The Substance hits a narrative dead
end as after setting up such an intriguing scenario, Fargeat fails to follow
through in compelling fashion. The film devolves into clunky bedroom farce
as Sue and Elizabeth try to conceal their alter-egos from various prying
eyes, and in the final half hour it descends into Henelotter-esque
body-horror that is so over the top it's unintentionally laughable. The
movie's first 70 minutes fly past as it's laying out its novel scenario, but
the remaining 70 minutes drag on interminably, which might itself be a meta
commentary on the aging process.
The biggest problem with The Substance is the dated nature of
its commentary on stardom. Its suggestion that aging stars are binned for
younger models doesn't resonate in 2024, when Hollywood's top draws are
still Tom, Nicole, Meryl, Brad et al, when Messi and Ronaldo are still the
biggest names in football, and when music fans would rather fork out
hundreds to see The Rolling Stones rather than take a chance on some up and
coming music act. If anything, the problem with stardom today is that the
old guard refuses to make way for new talent. Far from still being obsessed
with unattainable beauty standards, we now put obese bodies on the covers of
fitness magazines. Despite being set in the present day, the milieu of
The Substance seems stuck in the 1980s, with no
acknowledgement of how media is actually consumed in 2024. Wouldn't Sue be
an online influencer rather than a TV host today?
It also doesn't help that Fargeat is often guilty of indulging in the very
thing she's ostensibly critiquing. Her camera fetishes Qualley's young body,
circling it with the same snaking movements she used so effectively to
portray her Revenge heroine as a vengeful warrior, but she
films Moore's naked form in a coldly dispassionate way that's keen to remove
any sexuality (there isn't enough of a gulf in attractiveness between Moore
and Qualley for this to be effective; they both have ridiculously enviable
figures), and as the body-horror increases Fargeat asks us to be repulsed by
the very idea of an aging female body; too much of the humour relies on us
laughing at Elizabeth rather than the system of which she's a victim. At a
certain point The Substance's obsession with highlighting its heroine's deteriorating form veers into
ableism and it becomes a sort of anti-Elephant Man.
Ironically, the movie's most effective scene is its most grounded. Now
aware of her deteriorating form, Elizabeth agrees to a date with a man to
whom she earlier gave the brush off. All dressed up and looking a million
dollars, Elizabeth catches sight of Sue's image on a giant billboard outside
her window. Returning to her bathroom, she begins examining herself,
suddenly cognisant of supposed "flaws" she hadn't previously noted, to the
point where her self-worth is so shattered she cancels the date (with a man
who wouldn't have given a hoot about any of her imagined imperfections).
Amid all the rubbery effects and body-horror, it's this small moment that
will resonate most with audiences (as a younger man I would often spend the
week looking forward to a night out at the weekend, only to cancel it at the
last minute having caught my unflattering reflection as I left home). When
it comes to looking "our best," we're not competing with societal
expectations so much as our own mirrors.
The Substance is in UK/ROI cinemas
from September 20th.
