The Substance | 2024
There is no doubt that Coralie Fargeat's The Substance is a stylish film. It is one of the boldest and most outrageous films to receive a wide release in recent memory, and to that end, it is something worth celebrating. Fargeat is taking huge swings here, and regardless of how one responds to those swings, it feels like something of a minor miracle to see a film that takes such risks playing at the local multiplex.
The film initially caused a splash at the Cannes Film Festival this past summer for its uncompromising satire of the entertainment industry and how its impossible beauty standards set women up for both failure and self-destruction. Demi Moore stars as Elisabeth Sparkle, an aging movie star who now hosts a daily workout morning show. Her, star, however, has quite literally faded (as represented by her weathered star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame), and studio execs (in the form of a delightfully grotesque Dennis Quaid) are pushing for a younger, sexier star.
That's when Sparkle discovers The Substance, a miracle drug that allows her to create a living, breathing, younger copy of herself. The only catch is, she must switch bodies every seven days or face major consequences. Her new alter ego, Sue (Margaret Qualley) is an instant sensation, and the allure of her recaptured fame proves more potent than any drug, leading her to spend more and more time in her younger body at the expense of her old, turning her quest for eternal beauty into a Kafka-esque nightmare that will spell certain destruction for both.
It's an outlandish concept, but Fargeat is clearly not interested in subtlety, because The Substance is an often harrowing experience, an unsettling and often bruising descent into utter madness - Sunset Boulevard by way of Cronenberg and De Palma. Where it gets muddled in is in its somewhat confused metaphors. Sprinkle is clearly motivated to seek her fountain of youth due to the male studio executives, whose exaggerated, loathsome appearances stand in stark contrast to the striking Moore (it is she, not they, who needs to be concerned about looks). But by the end she is suffering in a world of her own torment, unable to pull herself away from the siren song of youth and beauty. She becomes the very ghastly creature she feared becoming all along.
There's something about that messaging that feels off to me. By the time she gets her Carrie moment in the film's delirious finale, Sparkle has become a monster, less a pitiable creature and more a cosmic joke at her own expense. Perhaps that is the real tragedy at the heart of the The Substance, but the "just love yourself as you are" message falls a bit flat when Sparkles rapidly aging body becomes a source of deep revulsion for both her and the audience.
While its metaphors sometimes feel a bit too on the nose (you can feel Fargeat boldly underlining and circling her points to ensure we get it), there's a lot to admire here. It's a film I've found myself returning to and reflecting upon often since seeing it, and I'm grateful that something like this exists to provoke such thoughts. Fargeat is a talented stylist working with a killer cast, and despite my reservations, I found the film to be quite invigorating as a whole. It's such a raw, angry film, and while its shotgun-blast approach may not be the most elegant, it's such a visceral experience that, like it or not, demands to be grappled with.
