For higher and for worse, The Substance, the brand new, buzzy physique horror movie, sends up oppressive magnificence requirements with the subtlety of a blowtorch.
The substance itself, a brat-green liquid labeled “ACTIVATOR” within the font of a minimalist skincare line, ignites an odd mobile response. When injected into an egg, as within the movie’s title sequence, the yolk trembles and splits into two. Injected into Elisabeth, performed by the cannily forged Demi Moore, a “newer, higher you” – an idealized clone named Sue (Margaret Qualley) with extra collagen and fewer wrinkles – emerges from a gnarly slice alongside her backbone. (The substance’s mysterious firm, off-screen save for a number of lockboxes in a vacant Los Angeles, supplies twine for the strikingly icky stitch-ups).
Dualities abound in The Substance; Elisabeth is besieged by reflections – by previous photographs of herself as a youthful, extra profitable health TV host, by mirrors reflecting her aged (and at 61, lovely by any commonplace) face, by a facet of her psyche so determined for youth that it’s keen to separate into one other being. The principles of each the substance and the movie are inflexible – change our bodies each seven days, through diet packs and a crisp multi-step process evoking weight-loss regimes hawked on Instagram – but murky. Although the corporate stresses that Elisabeth and Sue “are one”, they don’t share a consciousness, as a substitute competing with one another for extra time and bodily management to more and more brutal, grotesque and excessively bloody ends. (Suffice to say, there’s a Dorian Grey asterisk to the substance, and neither obey the foundations.)
If Elisabeth doesn’t even get to expertise the firmer ass and glowing youth she so wantonly craves, why proceed? That query misplaced me, however given the strain ladies really feel to by no means age, the web’s relentless panopticon of self-critique and the dearth of roles for feminine actors of Moore’s age to sink their enamel into, The Substance’s audacity is sufficient to entice consideration for which means which will or will not be there. Fittingly for its fissured protagonists, the movie, from the French author and director Coralie Fargeat, has provoked a few of the most polarized reactions this 12 months. It drew raves on the Cannes Movie Competition, the place it netted Fargeat a screenplay award and led some viewers to stroll out mid-screening. Critiques have been equally divided between effusive reward – The Substance as deranged, brilliantly disgusting feminist critique – and exhaustion with its punishing, hyper-stylized portrayal of a lady lowered to maddening obsession.
I’m admittedly extra within the latter camp, although I arrived at The Substance already cautious of a wave of voguish, nominally feminist cinema that presupposes feminine trauma and finds deflated, if splashy, dramatic stakes within the reveal of all the pieces and everybody being the worst potential model conceivable. These so-called #MeToo thrillers – Promising Younger Lady, Don’t Fear Darling, Blink Twice, amongst others – extra instantly concern sexual assault, which isn’t Fargeat’s direct focus, although The Substance does function a cartoonishly boorish media government named Harvey performed by a repulsive Dennis Quaid, who overtly dismisses Elisabeth for her age and objectifies Sue. However the Substance, although a style movie, operates in an identical register, over-indexing visible aptitude and psychological extremity over coherent logic or a lot to say past yeah, it’s fairly unhealthy on the market.
Nonetheless, Fargeat’s willingness to go there – and by there, I imply a lady’s brutal self-annihilation for a pervasive concept of magnificence – needles even after the movie devolves into an egregiously lengthy and prosthetics-driven mess. The movie’s most intriguing conceit can also be its downfall: taking over Elisabeth’s warped, deeply lonely worldview by setting her spiral in a brutalist, surreal Los Angeles devoid of a recognizable leisure business or private backstory. In interviews, Fargeat has mentioned the movie’s disconnection from actuality was a deliberate option to make the story extra timeless, to signify Hollywood extra as a hologram of concepts than a particular place. The bluntly retro (minus smartphones) and starkly color-coded movie provocatively seems to be like borderline psychosis. One might argue that absolutely inhabiting Elisabeth’s delusional lust for youth, her stage 11 physique dysmorphia and lacerating self-loathing, is the purpose. However the impact just isn’t a lot relatable timelessness, or mitosis of the thoughts delivered to life, as summary to the purpose of alienating. The 1992 movie Demise Turns into Her, starring Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn as petty and youth-obsessed ladies, delivers the identical message with much more wit, specificity and sensible results.
Followers, and definitely Fargeat herself, would say the movie’s bluntness, its gonzo too-much-ness, is an efficient fashion selection. I’d argue for all its intriguing materials, Fargeat’s intentionally unsubtle execution crosses the road into self-satisfied extra, boldness mistaken for brilliance. That the Substance provokes in any respect, although, could also be proof of its success; these are the personal anxieties that rankle, contradict and gnaw at our interior selves, that shade our perceptions and are sometimes uglier than we’d ever admit.
And positively casting Moore, a 90s icon who has endured misogynist judgment, extra scrutiny and waning alternatives, on this flashy of a task is a victory in and of itself. The movie’s simplest sequence owes to her alone: anxiously getting ready for a date, Elisabeth attire and fixes her face on loop, by no means happy sufficient together with her look to depart. We see her visage darken with anger, disappointment, disgust – on the nice traces, the shadows, the proof of age. For a fleeting, heart-wrenching second, there’s a full girl within the mirror.
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