Dubbed the best screenplay at the 77th Annual Cannes Film Festival, Coralie Fargeat set to shock cinemas with her satirical body horror “The Substance”, starring Margaret Qualley and Demi Moore. Satirical body horror. With a feminist twist. I have not been so excited to see a film in a long time and I’m devasted to say, Fargeat fumbled this for me.
The Substance had boundless potential. Too much potential, rather, which is why it felt so dissapointing. Evocative of Cronenberg, body horror as a genre, is the perfect medium to examine this Ozempic pumped, anti-ageing dystopia women have had thrust upon them. (Which is interesting, knowing Fargeat wrote this screenplay 4 years ago, before the Ozempic, fight for skinniness truly took flight.) Nevertheless, in a world full of filler, injectables and face lifts, let’s disturb and humiliate our audience for perpetuating these values. However, with a thirty-minute final act that took on a sort of ‘throw everything at the wall and see what sticks approach’, it became a farce and made a mockery of something that could have been so good.
Elizabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore), was the celebrated starlet of her time. After a series of unfortunate events that involves a car accident after her weight-loss, ‘Call on Me-eques’, aerobics show gets axed on her 50thbirthday… Elizabeth ends up injecting herself with a BRAT-coded, Mountain dew looking substance, namely entitled The Substance.
The Substance is set to generate a “younger, more perfect, more beautiful version of you”, and so, Sue (Margaret Qualley) is born. Emerging from a slit that opens from Elizabeth’s spine, Sue is the hotter, younger, perkier version of Elizabeth. They’re the same… but not, they’re “one”, but with separate consciousnesses and separate agendas. The only thing that binds them together is the fact they exist from each other: one resting, one living, existing off the shared stabilizer fluid found in the others lumbar.
This is all great. Seeing Sue emerge from Elizabeth’s back, I was excited by the concept of Elizabeth shedding her aged persona to relive her youth in this new body. But that’s not the case, The Substance vaguely describes them as “one”, but they are two different people? Sue uses her living time to replace Elizabeth in a sexualised, raunchy workout show entitled “Pump it Up with Sue”, and soon becomes America’s hottest celebrity. Elizabeth, on the other hand, grows more insecure and defeated in her living time, in consequence of Sue’s stardom.
I can understand that society’s ridiculous beauty standards can make women feel insecure, and that can reach a point of desperation. However, it’s a massive oversight and unrealistic to believe it makes them stupid. I’m struggling to see what Elizabeth gains from this bizarre arrangement? Sue taking over her life, ascending to stardom and bringing hot, young guys back to her apartment, while she lies passed out in a dark room (miraculously built by Sue and her unexplained carpentry skills)? Fargeat did not care for Elizabeth’s complexities. A fantastical concept, that I was willing to suspend my belief to, became wildly unbelievable and flippantly executed.
On a more positive note, I still think it’s important to stress that my cinematic experience was one of the most turbulent (and in a weird way enjoyable because of that?) experiences I have had in front of the big screen, and I thoroughly enjoyed poking fun at the pervy men who ran this joint.
Qualley and Moore both gave the performances of a lifetime in their respective roles, and I especially loved the psychological deterioration Moore showed in the scene where she tries to get ready for her date with Frank. This was the deepest insight we saw into Elizabeth’s psychology and Moore portrayed this justly.
Benjamin Karcun’s cinematography was masterful. The neon, sickly shades used in the Hollywood empire, where Elizabeth and Sue film their TV shows, was horrifying in a whole new way. I commend Fargeat’s decision to stick with old- school practical effects, in a world full of CGI 3D graphics, this feels reminiscent of classic 80s Horror.
Ironically… The Substance, was entirely style of substance for me. What should have been a fantastic body horror feminist REVENGE story, played on much of what, I hoped, it sought to dismantle: haggification troupes and the lack of redemption left a sour taste in my mouth.
Should you go and see it in the cinemas? Yes. Will you feel empowered and enlightened to disassemble aggressive female beauty standards and the inherent ageist structures that exist around us? I’ll let you decide.
Lucy Speer
30th October 2024
There Will be Spoilers 