I have been staring at a blinking cursor for several minutes now, failing to find a place to start discussing Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance. This is, to be clear, not a complaint. The audacious and unrelenting film is one of the most singular works of cinema I have seen this year, and debatably in any other. It’s a laser-focused satire of society’s toxic beauty standards. Set in a surreal fever-dream world, the film examines how far one might be willing to go to stay ahead of those standards, takes that simple idea to its further logical endpoint, and then keeps going.
Demi Moore stars as Elisabeth, an older but still active actress with a successful television fitness show, the kind that Jane Fonda used to do. She is, in a word, stunning. There’s no getting around the fact that Demi Moore is still a gorgeous and powerful woman, which makes the following scene in which Dennis Quaid lets her know that past the age of 50 she has no value to the industry.
Soon after, she is in an accident, and while being dismissed utterly by the older male doctor attending her, the young, hot doctor hands her a card with the number for The Substance on it, saying it changed his life.
It’s important to note that The Substance, the film, takes place in a world adjacent to our own. This world is where Elisabeth is a TV star with an exercise show simply called “The Show,” a world where we only get the details we need. It’s also a world devoid of subtlety. Dennis Quaid’s disgusting, leering, open-mouth-chewing producer character is named Harvey, surely a jibe at the now-disgraced former Hollywood mogul of the same name, and this is the least of it.
So when Elisabeth takes the substance, the drug, we know nothing about it other than that she picks it up from a sterile lab disguised in a dilapidated warehouse and that once she takes it, her back splits open, and a younger, hotter version of herself played by Margret Qualley is born. To say this -and the following scene in which the younger self stitches up Elisabeth’s back with enormous needle and thick black sutures featured in the film poster- is visceral would be an understatement.
It’s also only the beginning. The rules of the substance make it clear that they are the same person and that they must trade off being in control in one-week intervals. While one is awake, the other lies comatose in the bathroom, being fed by an IV. This arrangement works fine at first, but soon, there is conflict as Elisabeth and her younger self, now named Sue, end up at odds about staying in the limelight.
Moore and Qualley are both magnificent in their shared role. The film asks nearly everything of each of them and they both deliver. Qualley cements herself as one of the hottest up-and-comers on the scene, as her portrayal of Sue requires her to go places with both nagging doubt and righteous fury.
The film belongs to Demi Moore, in any case. Her turn as Elisabeth is a career-defining performance in which she portrays a woman fighting against the competing goals of staying famous and remaining herself. The film is not shy about making its points about societal beauty standards, and it’s Moore who has to portray them. One wordless scene in the middle of the film in which she is applying makeup before a dinner date might be the best-acted scene of the year, as she oscillates between self-acceptance and self-doubt and eventually spirals into self-loathing.
These beauty standards are the film’s central focus, they and how far some might go to stay ahead of them and stay in the spotlight, and what that might cost our future self. That sounds like a metaphor, but I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to say that this film portrays that directly and to great effect. It’s accurate to say that the film is laser-focused on the topic, but it’s also accurate to point out that the laser in question is the planet killer mounted on the death star.
In most horror films, where the protagonist inflicts a curse upon themself ends when that character faces up to their insecurity and perhaps sacrifices a part of themselves to break the curse, and the film ends. The Substance is not that film, approaching that point multiple times and refusing to stop. The last twenty minutes are among the most excessive ever put to screen, rivalling the classics of body horror and perhaps surpassing them. Only time will tell, but I can tell you that there is an image of Demi Moore’s face locked in a voiceless wail of abject terror that I will not soon forget, and it’s not even the focus of the scene it’s in.
The Substance is the most singular and unapologetic work of cinema of the year. It’s big, brash, and content to slap you in the face anytime your attention might waver. It’s gorgeously shot, tremendously acted, and completely unsubtle. I cannot promise you will like it, but I can absolutely guarantee that you should see it.
The Substance is now in theaters.
Learn more about the film, including how to buy tickets, at the MUBI website.
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