Are you looking for a post-feminism film that deconstructs the toxic beauty standard of society but found the Barbie movie too glammed-up in a shiny, pink package?
Is your film aesthetic 1980s camp-horror á la Troma films and Frank Henenlotter?
Well, then The Substance is just what you have been searching for.
The Substance is an in-your-face, unapologetic satire about how women are groomed from birth to adhere to unhealthy views on beauty and self-worth.
Demi Moore stars as the once top-listed actress, Elisabeth Sparkle, who’s star has faded to the less than glamorous realm of morning TV, Elisabeth loses her last foothold in the public eye when chief executive Harvey (Dennis Quaid) fires Elisabeth after she passes the dreaded middle age milestone birthday.
Following a car crash that most people would just be grateful to walk away from in one piece, Elisabeth is clandestinely slipped the contact information for a mysterious elixir called The Substance by her unearthly and beautiful ER nurse.
The Substance promises the opportunity to create a new, more beautiful, “better version of yourself in every way”.
The only catch: you can only spend one week as the perfect you before you have to be your current self for a week. Always alternating the time, one week at a time, a perfect balance.
No exceptions.
Elisabeth succumbs to the allure of the Substance after a drunken, depressed evening.
Once taken, Elisabeth spawns a new, younger, physically idealized version of herself. Sue (Margaret Qualley) is born.
Now, the two versions must share one life. Things start to go horribly wrong when Sue starts to gain fame in her own right, and greedily wants more of the time for herself. It’s a battle between youthful arrogance and aged experience grasping onto what each believes is important.
The Substance starts by lulling you into a familiar viewing experience with the typical trappings of an independent film exploring important social issues.
Director Coralie Fargeat tackles the way society, and in particular the entertainment industry, continue to shackle women with the expectation their only worth is in their physical beauty. The young and beautiful are revered. Anyone beyond the bloom of youth is cast aside. Through Elisabeth, we see how the men in her world control how she and other women are seen and what opportunities they are offered and more importantly denied.
Then, as Elisabeth discovers The Substance, Fargeat starts pushing the viewer.
She turns up the volume on the cringe inducing scenes with Harvey and throws in unexpected sprinklings of body gore. She could have had Sue spawn from Elisabeth in a neat and clean way. But no, that’s not the way this bus is going. Sue bursts through her, leaving Elisabeth nude, unconscious on the floor of a bathroom with her spine exposed. Fargeat makes the audience watch as Sue sutures Elisabeth’s back, camera close-up on the needle, puncturing and pulling the skin. From here on out, the bizarre body gore keeps intensifying.
As the film progresses, Fargaet ups the ante.
Fargeat juxtaposes the gore with montages of Sue’s rise in the entertainment industry. The viewer is bombarded with images of tits and ass, literally. The shots are framed so only the “desired” body parts are shown, withholding the person’s humanity and personality. A comment the the pervasive male gaze in media. It doesn’t matter who the butt belongs to, as long as it’s young, firm, and goes where it is told.
And just when you think you have the film figured out, Fargeat pulls out all the stops and takes the film for a sharp left hand turn into Troma territory.
The monsters that are created are full-on practical effects. It is both refreshing and a joy to watch. Fargeat is steeped in 1970s and 1980s cult horror films and the last 15 mins is a no-hold barred tribute to greats like Stanley Kubrick, John Carpenter, with a dash of Brian De Palma.
I loved that Demi Moore signed on to be Elisabeth. She, like many actresses, have faced the same challenges as her character. I love that the film gives her (and other women to live vicariously through her) the opportunity to give the middle finger to the industry that perpetuates unrealistic and unsustainable standards.
I always knew where the film was going and it did in fact take me to my expected destination, but it drove over the median and up the sidewalk to get there.
The Substance is not a film for everyone, but it absolutely isn’t trying to be.
It has the makings of a cult classic that will sit happily on the shelf next to John Waters and Tod Browning.
* * * * *
Produced by Coralie Fargeat, Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner
Written and Directed by Coralie Fargeat
Starring Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid
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