The Substance is to be Avoided. But is The Substance?
DIRECTED BY CORALIE FARGEAT/2024
Now this… this right here… is why we shouldn’t just use the term “bonkers” to describe any old film that might be kind of weird. No one can fully or knowingly break down what The Substance is composed of, but one is certainly inclined to try. Unapologetically directed in a manner that is as “off her rocker” as it is obtusely ridged, filmmaker Coralie Fargeat’s (she of 2017’s ultra-violent Revenge) The Substance is an immediate female gender-studies cornerstone that most active gender-studiers will be inclined to actively avoid. It is justifiably bonkers.
Two-thirds Cronenbergian body horror with recognizable dashes of Nicholas Winding Refn’s Neon Demon, Robert Zemeckis’ Death Becomes Her, and Julia Ducournau’s Titane, Fargeat proceeds to push contemporary female body dysmorphia through the Black Mirror, into The Twilight Zone, and beyond The Outer Limits. There are, no doubt, many more active ingredients discernible just beneath the horrifically weird science fiction surface, though they’re harder to parse, as the Substance insists on being absorbed intravenously.
In some vaguely recognizable and tacky retroized world where aerobics shows dominate the boob tube, Elisabeth Sparkle is the most sedimentary star out there. Looking lusty in her leotard and looming large (in the world and in her home), she has been the very image of the concocted ideal human goddess.
But now, the routine is over. Elisabeth, the decades-long morning TV fixture, as portrayed with full frontal stark commitment by Demi Moore, has suddenly aged out of her own workout program. Over an intensely repulsive meal of shrimp, the maniacally misogynistic programming overlord Harvey (Dennis Quaid, slithering into a role intended for the late Ray Liotta and making Stanley Tucci’s Caesar Flickerman seem subtle by comparison) aggressively but flippantly lets her go.
Desperate to get back on top, Elisabeth opts to try a super hush-hush compound known only as “the Substance”, which promises a newer, better, more perfect her. Mysterious in every way, the only thing for sure about the Substance is that it is in no way F.D.A. approved. The directions are tersely simple, evoking the overly brief system set-up in Spike Jones’ Her. Deviate from said directions at your own great peril. And of course, she goes on to do just that.
The newer, younger, more perfect version of Demi Moore turns out to be Margaret Qualley, who literally emerges from her body. The Qualley version, oblique and remote (taking full advantage of the actress’s potent otherness), assumes the name “Sue” and promptly scores her aged self’s old TV aerobics job, albeit in a newfangled loud and polished incarnation. Harvey loves her, the world loves her, she’s a sexualized sensation, squatting and thrusting her way into the lonely hearts of America.
But there’s a catch. Every seven days, Sue must switch out with Elisabeth, and then vice versa. The dormant version is left lying unconscious on the bathroom floor of her/their luxury apartment, naked and hooked up to a week’s worth of daily sustenance. More than once, this conceit flares up like Cinderella at the ball at the stroke of midnight. Only this Cinderella won’t turn into a ragged peasant or a pumpkin. She will turn into her wicked stepmother, her oppressor.
Central to the fairy tale urtext of The Substance is the notion of contemporary female duality; how modern women are at war with themselves. Conventional male objectification and scrutiny are potent seed reasons. Then there’s also generations of compliance to the point of pornography. The film posits that inside every woman, there’s the svelte idealized vixen that societal pressures one into aspiring towards, and then there’s the actual woman who is living her life and has lived… with the honest body to show for it. That Demi Moore’s admittedly attractive body is considered frumpy and frowned upon is fundamentally absurd- and Fargeat totally knows it.
The Substance administrator- just a disembodied male voice on the phone- reiterates that Elisabeth and Sue are one, a single person living two lives at separate but uniform intervals. Yet, Sue and Elisabeth grow to intensely resent one another- self-hatred actualized, weaponized, and embodied twice-over. To say it all spirals out of control would be a grotesque understatement.
How Demi Moore was lured back into the spotlight for something that ultimately is this gloriously gory, gloppy, and gross, one can only guess. It can’t be for the money; this production has spent most of it on various and sundry repulsions: malleable flesh, lycra workout attire, Dennis Quaid’s godawful David S. Pumpkins-esque wardrobe, a sordid surplus of sinew, and prop blood not just measurable by the gallon but by PSI.
Controversial and divisive as such a thing ought to be, The Substance is destined to stick in the social synapses as an experience and statement. Not so much “the ugly Barbie” as a mutated Bertha Mason unleashed upon the unsuspecting populace, it’s genuinely impressive how Fargeat transverses and upends ingrained notions of Venus vanity and Vertigo with Elisabeth’s mail-order Faustian pact. (Never mind that it was presented as more of a warped licensing agreement). The cameras both in-world and in our world grant Sue the leers she aspires to. But what is the cost? What has been the cost? Because there’s always a cost.
Some complain that Fargeat has done nothing more than make an aggressively unpleasant and overly long episode of “Tales from the Crypt”, happily wielding its metaphor like a sledgehammer. Feel that way if you must, but to do so is to marginalize the malicious mise-en-scéne herein. It is with great, forceful, maximalist release that Fargeat shouts to the pedestal propping practitioners that, “If you spew judgement, we will spew blood.” That is the deal going forward.
Once one actively engages The Substance, there’s no going back. At this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Fargeat took the Best Screenplay award (courtesy of Greta Gerwig’s jury, no less) for this wonderfully giddy disturbing screed. While the likelihood of more awards for the film, particularly stateside, seems iffy at best, I’d expect Demi Moore to generate some dark horse recognition here and there. Qualley, however, is equally deserving, though she’s likely to be the unawarded Tom Cruise to the Oscar winning Dustin Hoffman in a Rain Man scenario. Anyway, who cares. This one will live on well beyond the 2024 film awards hustle. For all its fore-fronted repulsion and bare-bodied cautionary qualities, there’s little denying that this is an unforgettably bonkers film; one of particular…Substance.
