If there is one thing that stands out about the Cannes hit The Substance – well, apart from how gross it is – is it’s blistering rage. French filmmaker Coralie Fargeat does not have the inclination to subtly and precisely display the double standards of the entertainment industry. After all, everything that she’s saying is already so obvious. There’s no way to point it out without feeling didactic, and shielding it in indecipherable metaphor is too pretentious. The Substance is less a metaphor then it is a waking nightmare brought to stunning and horrifying reality. For women, Hollywood is a violent place. If Fargeat’s film feels over-the-top, then we must also contend that the reality is even worse.
The main talking point out of Cannes was Demi Moore, the iconic (and iconically beautiful) movie star from the 80s and 90s. One could argue that Moore hasn’t been given a substantial Hollywood role since 2003’s Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, playing the campy villain. Her performance in Full Throttle was movie star personified, but it also symbolized something more sinister: noticeably older than the trio of stars heading the movie, she was now the bad guy, not the ingenue. For the two decades since, Hollywood has had no idea what to do with her. Which makes her perfect for the role of Elisabeth Sparkle, an award-winning actress who hosts a long-running exercise program on morning television. Elisabeth is an institution, but after passing the age of fifty, television executives are getting antsy for something new.
The executives are represented by Harvey (Dennis Quaid in a performance where he’s literally chewing the scenery), a pompous and obnoxious TV studio head who demands Elisabeth Sparkle be replaced with someone younger. There’s no evidence that Elisabeth has become unpopular or that the quality of her show has diminished. Harvey appears to want someone younger merely on principle. He explains this to her with a casual cruelty while mashing shrimp in a swanky LA restaurant. The irony of the completely grotesque Harvey being an authority on what’s attractive is one of the first times Fargeat really puts her thumb on the scale thematically. Morose, Elisabeth gets a secret message while visiting the doctor, it’s a thumb drive wrapped in a piece of paper. On the drive states “The Substance” with a phone number.
The Substance is a product that ominously promises a better life for those searching to recapture the younger version of themselves. After calling the phone number and placing an order with the nameless, affectless voice on the other end, Elisabeth picks up her first package from a sleek storage facility within an extremely sketchy alley. Returning home she reads the very specific rules: activate only once, you must stabilize every day, you must switch back every seven days (no exceptions), and most importantly: always remember you are one. The rules feel hard to parse. What do these words even mean? There are two bags filled with seven days’ worth of food, one for “the matrix” and one for the “other self”. Despite all this foreboding messaging, Elisabeth injects herself with the neon green substance and activates. This is when The Substance really kicks into gear.
Immediately, Elisabeth collapses, and a full human cracks open a slit in her back and crawls out. This human (played brilliantly by Margaret Qualley) is her other, younger self. Decades younger, smoother face, tighter butt, perkier breasts. Almost immediately she falls in love with this new version of herself and immediately tries out to be Elisabeth Sparkle’s replacement. The moment Harvey sees her – her thin but curvaceous figure wrapped in a revealing pink leotard – he hires her. She calls herself Sue, and she becomes an instant star, with billboards across the city touting her arrival. There’s only one catch, she must return to being Elisabeth in seven days. The trade-off seems easy enough at first, but soon Elisabeth finds she has little control over Sue, and as the younger woman takes extra time before switching, it begins to suck the life out of the older woman.
There’s a lot of macabre, violent imagery throughout The Substance. This is often contrasted against the idealized male gaze of both Elisabeth and Sue. Fargeat wants these images to become entangled, illustrating the ways one feeds into the other. The few men there are in this story are merely horny hangdogs who interact with women only within the context of wanting to fuck them, and see entirely through any woman that they don’t want to fuck. There’s not much room in these characters for nuance, but that’s mostly because Fargeat has so much that she has to say. Subtlety is a luxury she can’t afford. There are moments when I wish she trusted her audience more, where she didn’t feel the need to telegraph her meanings so obviously, but doing so may cut against the film’s anger, which might be its most important attribute.
Even at her peak, Demi Moore has been an actress known mostly for the way that she looks. Her beauty seemed both modern and old-fashioned at the same time. Even in a movie like G.I. Jane, the narrative becomes more about her shaving her head than about the film itself. When you consider her career, and how much time the media spent discussing how she looked, one could admire how she’s more or less maintained a stable personal life (give or take some high profile marriages and divorces). The Substance proves that there is something still living deep within her, a fury at an industry that never took her seriously, and a mistrust of a public that was quick to forget her. All of this is present in Elisabeth Sparkle, a character that makes major emotional and physical demands from Moore. It’s the best performance of her career and also a somber nod to a talent we’ve previously failed to nurture.
Margaret Qualley has carved out a rather impressive career in the last five years; working with Quentin Tarantino, Claire Denis, Ethan Coen, among others, and delivering an impressively varied number of characters. At times, it feels like her fearlessness outweighs her abilities as an actor, but The Substance feels like the perfect vehicle for her quirky, mannered performance style. Together, her and Moore deliver a dual performance of a character that feels impossible. Fargeat won Best Screenplay at Cannes for this film, and her direction is stylish and unfiltered. The story – Dorian Gray told by Fly-era David Cronenberg – is scathing, even if it runs a tad too long and has too many endings. By the end, you’re pulverized, not only by the outrageous finale that is impossible to describe let alone spoil, but also by the rigorous journey it takes to get there.
I felt genuinely shocked by this film – something I haven’t felt at a movie in a very long time. When Fargeat commits to the body horror elements, she does so in a way that can only be described as gross. By the time we got to the film’s ending, it felt pedantic and unnecessarily obscene, and I walked out of the theater unmoored by the extremity of Fargeat’s vision. Given some time to think it over, I’m now in awe of what she’s pulled off here. This is a horror movie that is legitimately scary, but not in the ways you would expect. It’s satire is brutal, and through all of its obtuseness, still very clever. More than anything, it has its two lead performances, which should be mentioned amongst the very best of the year. The degree to which this is not my cup of tea cannot be overstated, but it’s singularity of vision cannot be denied.
Written and Directed by Coralie Fargeat