Wild. Demented. Shocking. Bizarre. Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance is all of the above. It’s difficult to achieve an R rating in Australia nowadays but this movie clears the bar with ease. Along with the blood and full-frontal nudity, there’s a ferocious energy that propels the story forward, and a brand of comedy that leaves one laughing through clenched teeth.
If this slice of “body horror” provided nothing but cheap thrills, or laborious, sadistic pulp, like most David Cronenberg movies, it would be nothing but a passing disturbance for the nerves and stomach. Instead, it’s a film that has a lot to say about aging, body image, popular entertainment, female insecurity and male desire. It’s brazen, erotic, fast-moving and one of the most memorable features you’ll see this year, so long as you’re 18 years old or over.
There are multiple stories mashed up in this saga, from Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde toSunset Boulevard, but some of its themes go much further back. I thought of Lucas Cranach’s painting, The Fountain of Youth (1546), in which wrinkled old ladies are undressed and herded into a marble clad pool where they are magically rendered young and desirable. Upon leaving the pool, these born-again nymphets are ushered into tents, clothed in fine garments and sent off to flirt with aristocratic-looking chaps at a banquet table.
The Substance is a contemporary Fountain of Youth tale, in which female beauty is portrayed as a marketable commodity for male appetites. Demi Moore, in what may be the role of her life, is Elisabeth Sparkle, an aging TV workout queen, who, with a leotard-clad chorus, takes viewers through aerobics routines. It may be healthy but it’s not exactly good clean fun. Studio executive, Harvey (Dennis Quaid), is under no illusions as to why the show appeals to a mass audience. It’s sex in motion.
Elisabeth may be an acknowledged superstar, but she is also turning 50. She may be super-fit, but age is encroaching, and Harvey feels her time is up. Quaid’s performance is so gross and over-the-top, one feels like laughing and wretching every time he appears on screen. He has a personality that makes his namesake, Harvey Weinstein, seem charming. Fargeat emphasises Harvey’s unattractive qualities with severe close-ups of his face, not to mention the way he eats prawns.
Having been peremptorily dumped, Elisabeth is so upset she has a car accident and winds up in hospital. Upon discharge a nurse slips her a USB stick, with a note that reads: “It changed my life”. Having watched a promo for a wonder drug called The Substance, that promises a new, better you, she takes the plunge.
What follows is a scene that lingers long in the mind, as a young alter ego emerges from a gaping split in Elisabeth’s back. It’s a mixture of voyeurism and repulsion, as the director invites us to look at two naked female bodies rolling around on the bathroom floor in a gruesome birthing scene. When Elisabeth’s new “you” has got to her feet, leaving her host’s body slumped on the tiles, she looks at herself in the mirror, and likes what she sees.
In her brief career, Margaret Qualley has shown no qualms about getting her kit off, but she has never appeared so purely carnal as in this role, playing Elisabeth’s youthful Other. The rules that govern their shared existence are precise: after seven days, “Sue” must hand over to Elisabeth, then vice versa.
When Sue turns up at the TV station and wows lascivious Harvey, she becomes the host of the aerobics program. The new title, Pump it Up with Sue, says it all. Soon Sue is having such a great time she’s reluctant to hand over to Elisabeth. As she tries to extend her stay on the planet, she breaks the rules and unspeakable things start to happen, as we knew they would. The self-birthing scene may have been tough going, but it’s a mere taster for what follows.
The Substance is only Fargeat’s second feature, but it’s an impressively stylish and self-confident production. A fable about ageism, it begins with a scene in which Elisabeth’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame becomes cracked and dirty, ending as a fast-food dump. Celebrity may be hard won but it’s easily surrendered, with traumatic after-effects. Having lived her life as an object of desire, it’s extremely hard for Elisabeth to accept she’s now a has-been.
For Sue, it’s just as hard to hide away every second week, while the aging Elisabeth reclaims her share of life. Sue is as impatient as any young tyro who sees some old fogey standing in her way. Both women – two halves of the same person – revel in their status as objects of the male gaze. We recognise the obsession with body image that drives a booming market for cosmetic surgery, miracle diets, wonder drugs, retreats and exercise regimes.
Although she’s famous, Elisabeth is woefully insecure about her looks. Sue, who owes her very existence to Elisabeth’s inability to age gracefully, is voracious for everything she can grab from her newfound idolhood. It’s the void within both women that undermines their shiny surfaces.
There are only three actors worth mentioning, and they are all in top form. Quaid’s Harvey is a turbocharged caricature that embodies all the worst tendencies of the TV industry. Margaret Qualley is dazzling as Sue, the epitomé of brutal youth. But it’s Demi Moore who takes hold of this story – most likely because it’s painfully close to her own career as a sex symbol of the 1980s & 90s who bared it all in films such as Striptease(1996). In that movie Moore was 35 years old and built like an athlete. In The Substance, she is 60, pretending to be 50. The camera encourages us to note every trace of sagging flesh, but there’s virtually none. Moore’s Elisabeth has the kind of figure most women half her age would envy, but she is distressed by what she sees in the mirror. The contrast with Sue’s narcissistic self-admiration, a few minutes later, is a one-two punch.
An irresolvable mixture of feminist satire and exploitation flick, The Substance seethes with irony, taking Harvey’s vulgarity and Sue’s sex appeal to extremes. We’re revolted by one and seduced by the other, but alert to the director’s manipulations even as we succumb. The look of the film, the expressionistic camerawork, and a lively musical score by British composer, Raffertie, are so diverting, there’s barely time to stop and form an opinion. In our strange, puritanical age this movie will leave many viewers on the bathroom floor with Demi Moore, wondering what hit them.
The Substance
Written & directed by Coralie Fargeat
Starring: Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid, Hugo Diego Garcia, Oscar Lesage, Alexandra Papuolias Barton
UK, R 18+, 140 mins
Published in the Australian Financial Review, 21 September, 2024