Writer-director Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance begins with an overhead shot of a brand new star being installed on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. At first, the star is shiny and new—a destination for fans of the living, breathing star it represents, Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore). But as time passes, the star is less frequented, it cracks and those who walk over it struggle to remember any of Elisabeth’s movies — let alone her Oscar-winning role.
When we catch up with the real life Elisabeth, she’s been reduced to hosting a network workout show. She’s clearly had a long career she’s proud of, but she’s forced to brutally confront her approach to its inevitable end when she overhears her smarmy producer Harvey (Dennis Quaid) scheming to replace her with someone younger and hotter. Elisabeth’s day only gets worse when she’s in a terrible car accident from which she, miraculously, escapes unscathed. However, as she leaves the hospital, a preternaturally beautiful nurse slips her a USB drive with information on “The Substance,” which he professes changed his life.
That said, the slick commercial the drive contains barely explains what The Substance does and even after Elisabeth picks up her first dose, both she and the audience are only given the barest understanding of its mechanics. Mainly, that she will spawn a more perfect version of herself (played by Margaret Qualley) and every seven days, must alternate living between the two selves. If the film were pure sci-if, giving us so little understanding of the logistics might be a problem. Instead, because Fargeat works in broad, metaphorical strokes, she’s allowed to move on from the details to explore her ideas in increasingly wilder and grosser ways.
The central metaphor here is obvious: that Hollywood commodifies and uses women only to casually discard them once they grow too old and, allegedly, lose their sex appeal. I say allegedly because Elisabeth is, after all, played by Demi Moore, who remains strikingly beautiful at 61. Still, Moore was one of the most desired and successful actresses of the ’80s and ’90s before she stepped away from the limelight and one imagines she must feel some catharsis in acting out Elisabeth’s rage and fear at being discarded. You can feel Elisabeth’s disgust as she watches Harvey sloppily devour a plate of shrimp while he casually dismisses her, her self-righteous rage when she watches Sue talk about what a relic she’s become on a night time chat show.
Likewise, Qualley’s casting brings its own metaphorical richness. As the daughter of Andie MacDowell—yet another major star of the ’90s who largely stepped away—she quite literally embodies the idea of the younger, hotter generations constantly ready to replace the current stars. From her first scene, we both understand exactly how Sue could become a star and how much Fargeat is parodying the way young women are discovered when all Sue has to do is walk into a room in a revealing workout suit and sexily whisper her name in front of two slavering casting directors to succeed.
However, while both women are given some thrilling acting moments (Moore’s work in a scene where Elisabeth’s self esteem crumbles as she looks at herself in the mirror is some of the best of her career), they function within the film largely through their physicality. Where Elisabeth becomes increasingly reclusive, quite literally rotting in front of the TV and gorging herself on rich foods, Sue parties and shakes her perfect ass during Elisabeth’s old time slot. Indeed, the camera practically devours Qualley’s body, placed inches from her barely clothed butt more often than her face. In a different director’s hands, the choice would seem exploitative, but the fetishization is so extreme here that it becomes camp, the camera’s male gaze actually a wink at the audience.
Much of the filmmaking is carried off with that same cheek. Raffertie’s score swings from energetic and industrial in Sue’s scenes to foreboding and atmospheric in Elisabeth’s, the indistinct rustling and low bass sounds only enhancing the body horror. For both women, the costumes and sets are almost Barbiecore in their bright colors and every interior location is so clean and artificial looking that they almost feel like CGI. There’s an obvious metaphor about show business’s fakeness here, but Fargeat goes much further, much stranger than that at every opportunity. While the film is filled with body horror from the start, it goes absolutely nuts in the last act and the swings Fargeat takes there will undoubtedly divide viewers. Similarly, she goes from referencing Vertigo to 2001: A Space Odyssey to Carrie in a playfully gonzo way that can either feel audacious or cheap depending on how each viewer responds to her farcical yet nasty approach to the film’s ideas. She’s made a film for lovers of both film and celebrity culture and those less interested in those subjects may be put off entirely.
Still, while The Substance may piss off just as many viewers as it delights, there’s no denying that there’s nothing else like it currently in theaters. With committed and somewhat fearless performances from two brilliant actresses and a willingness to go batshit crazy with its metaphors, the film at the very least has a distinct point of view. Certainly, there are moments when Fargeat is so convinced of her own vision that points are overemphasized or scenes become tiresome in their need to provoke, but even in its most obnoxious moments, it’s impossible not to admire The Substance for its gall.
