Coralie Fargeat’s second feature film, The Substance, is a body horror film that won Best Screenplay at Cannes this year. The film stars Demi Moore, an ageing actress pushed out of the industry, no longer the sleek, fit, height-of-fashion star of her youth. In fact, one of the film’s opening scenes is a long, drawn-out scene of her Hollywood star, going from appreciated and celebrated to becoming cracked, trampled on, warn out, with leftover pizza covering the once glitzy star of respect, with the scene serving as a metonym of the film’s overall message of body image.
As Demi Moore’s subtly named Elizabeth Sparkle descends off her celebrity throne, seeing her face ripped from a billboard, a car crash leaves her in hospital, gives her the opportunity to take the substance, something she is told will change her life, as she is given a second physical body, where for every other week she can live out her fantasy and return to her younger, sleeker self.
The Substance is perhaps the most audacious and provocative film of the year. Although it starts out as a drama with a woman’s slow descent out of the celebrity scene, it quickly becomes a spine-chilling horror that leaves you grabbing your seat not out of fear but out of sheer disgust. Notably, the sound design is brilliantly horrific; the eating of prawns has never looked or sounded more gruesome.
However, whilst this use of gore is the film’s biggest selling point, The Substance also displays a uniquely jarring and extreme style compared to much Hollywood fare today. Each choice is cleverly thought through to convey character emotion, from the gazy shots of the younger, Sue, played by Margaret Qualley, to the shots behind Elizabeth aimed to show she is ashamed of her image. These are not shots for the sake of looking cool but rather carefully thought through so the image matches the thoughts of the characters to create multi-faceted layers of empathy. Fargeat also isn’t afraid to use multiple extreme close-ups, which provide added context and add to this empathetic lens, making the horror more horrifying. Or, in another case, a close-up of Harvey, played by Dennis Quaid, who gives an outlandish and brilliantly over-the-top performance, shows the disgusting male figure and the double standards between the male bosses and their female commodities which they desire to be young and ravishing.
The film is ultimately about public image, not just the image of self, but also the image the public places on you. It is a film warning against the need to prioritise the image. In one scene, Demi Moore’s Elizabeth alters her look to perfect her image and hide her imperfections and blemishes, as Fargeat shows the clock, the time moving along, providing anxiety, until the point where she is slumped in a dark bedroom, unable to revive her sparkle. However, this is not just a film criticising the stress of perfect body image, particularly for women; it is also a film commentating on judgemental gazes. It is a film that forces the audience to gaze, unwilling to cut away; as a society it invites us to judge the objects, particularly through billboards; this gaze is unavoidable. Indeed, even in scenes that are not explicitly sexual, it shows the characters impacted by how they present the image of themselves. For Moore’s character, she becomes part of this society, as a giant billboard is placed in front of her apartment, forced to look at the image of her younger counterpart, who is slowly chipping away at her soul.
Fargeat also uses the film to ask philosophical questions; as Qualley’s character appears, we are told by the substance that they are one. However, this statement is unclear. For one, Qualley only slightly resembles Moore, whilst they lack similar personalities and slowly become frustrated with each other, only able to stare at their comatose counterpart. As the two bodies struggle for power, Fargeat suggests this is not the case, yet they lead half-lives unable to separate from the other, which is the cost for youth.
Indeed, this desire for relevancy is fundamental to the film. Whilst The Substance refers to the potion to create a second younger body, the film, more importantly, is about the drug of desire, the desire to be youthful and famous, to be recognised and loved.
Although, for the most part, this is an extremely clever and satirical examination of the horror of the image, the film’s closing act is an overly indulgent conclusion to an otherwise enjoyable text. As the rules of the substance become unsurprisingly broken, the gore is ramped up to an absurdist point, leading to a final performance that displays society’s need to have role models of beauty. However, this final act overstays its welcome as the parameters of reality become slowly and slowly more irrelevant, with each subsequent moment trying to one-up the previous. It is as if Fargeat could not find a satisfying conclusion that leaves the audience with a sequence of eye-rolling absurdity, like a song that does not know how to end, so it fades into nothingness. Although there are opportunities for some form of catharsis between Elizabeth and Sue, this is ignored for an excessively glorified gorefest that loses the otherwise thought-provoking horror of the previous hour and a half.
The Substance features some of the most exciting filmmaking, which is slow, methodical, yes, but also extremely inquisitive, rewarding particularly attentive viewers. It features levels of gore that are not only there for effect but also to question the power of the image and the drug of the image, which is required for success in modern-day society. However, the film’s closing is bombastic. Still, the eye-rolling conclusion undercuts the potency of the message Fargeat wishes to convey.
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