More Than Style: THE SUBSTANCE Could be the Best Movie of the Year
A disgusting, insane and moving delight
You can see all the stars as you walk down Hollywood Boulevard
Some that you recognise, some that you've hardly even heard of
People who worked, and suffered and struggled for fame
Some who succeeded and some who suffered in vain
-The Kinks
There are many comparison points for Coralie Fargeat’s sophomore film, The Substance. Obviously there’s David Cronenberg, whose name will always be invoked when we’re talking about body horror. The Substance has a kind of aggression that reminds me of a young Darren Aronofsky, and it has the frenetic mischievousness of the best Sam Raimi. Yet while the movie brings these artists to mind, The Substance feels entirely and completely like its own thing; you can see its ancestors in the fossil record but this movie is not an homage or a pastiche or a reference-drowned geek fest. The Substance is its own remarkable, masterful work that just so happens to exist on a continuum of other remarkable, masterful works.
Demi Moore is Elizabeth Sparkle, once a famous award-winning actress who in middle age has been reduced to hosting a workout show. But even that is coming to an end as she is 50, and that’s simply too old for the network, and they’ve decided they need to find someone younger, fresher and more exciting. Despairing, Elizabeth discovers The Substance, a mysterious and ominous product that promises to give her back the best, younger version of herself. There are, of course, rules and possible complications, but Elizabeth is at her lowest and so she submits to the Substance.
What happens next is a sloppy and phantasmagoric escalation of grotesquery and nastiness. From Elizabeth’s back is birthed Sue (Margaret Qualley), the younger and more perfected version of her. After Sue clumsily sews up Elizabeth’s back with thick black twine, she has a week to live and do whatever she wants, simply needing to inject herself with a daily dose of Elizabeth’s spinal fluid (I can safely say The Substance has the most onscreen spinal fluid of any film in history). But at the end of those seven days Sue must swap with Elizabeth, who has been in a deathlike state for the week, and herself become comatose. This is the balance which must be maintained, and the mysterious people behind The Substance, who leave bi-weekly packages in a spotless room inside a filthy abandoned building, keep reminding Elizabeth that she and Sue are not two, but are one.
This existential lesson is lost on Elizabeth/Sue. Sue becomes famous and lives a partying lifestyle while Elizabeth sits home, a giant Sue billboard peering in her window, eating fried chicken and watching QVC. They each resent having to give the other their week And then one of them just stops switching, and the results become catastrophic.
The Substance is a fairy tale, if the elements of the story don’t make logical sense they all make emotional sense. Fargeat has created an ultra-heightened world where just about anything can happen, and just about anything does. The movie builds, builds and builds until it hits a final twenty or thirty minutes that are positively insane, like a Grand Guignol show taken far beyond maximalism. The spurting, bleeding, mutating and oozing horrors of the finale of this movie will have you cringing, cackling and retching while also hitting you deep in your emotional core. Fargeat is an astonishing filmmaker; not only is her style kinetic and exciting (I have not seen a better directed film this year, on a pure craft level) but also she has such a mastery of tone that she is able to hit you with two or three conflicting feelings at the same time and yet you do not feel confused or overwhelmed. Yes, this is sad and horrible. Yes, this is hilarious and weird. Yes, this is a tragedy of human proportions. Yes, this is the sickest shit I have ever seen.
Key to pulling off this tonality is performance, and Demi Moore delivers one for the ages. As Elizabeth she is depressed and determined, but most of all she is enormously vulnerable. I don’t just mean that in terms of nudity, which The Substance has a lot of, but in terms of revealing deep emotional elements that seem to blur the line between performance and reality. Moore doesn’t talk a lot in this film, many of her scenes are silent and alone, but she still communicates with thundering clarity. In a movie whose most arresting images involve abysmally grotesque body horror, it’s amazing that the single most upsetting sequence just has Demi Moore getting ready for a date, unable to find an outfit or makeup look that works for her. Again, this is a testament to Fargeat as a master - when a movie can hit you on both a visceral and emotional level it’s a great movie.
The other actors are terrific - Dennis Quaid in particular is wonderful as a cartoonish network exec; as the kids might say he understood the assignment - but this is absolutely Demi Moore’s film. She owns it and she carries it, and in a better world she’d be getting a Best Actress Oscar for it. I don’t think The Substance is the sort of film that gets Academy consideration, but after they gave Best Picture to a movie about fucking the Creature from the Black Lagoon I guess anything is possible. Whether or not she is recognized by the glitterati is besides the point, though - Moore is so fiercely excellent that this movie reminds us why she was one of our biggest stars in decades past, and also reminds us that her best days are not behind her.
Which, of course, is one reason why the performance works so well. As a woman aging in Hollywood, Demi Moore is Elizabeth Sparks. This is, on some level, her reality. And it’s the reality of all women in Western culture, a culture that lionizes youth above all and that penalizes any evidence of the natural aging process in women. It has been exciting to read women’s takes on this film because it is so often deeply personal; while I as a reasonably intelligent and empathetic man can get it, I cannot quite fully get it in the way that people living within the impossible system that prizes the most fleeting aspects of their physicality can.
This is of course why the movies are so great. A film like The Substance can be wildly entertaining, hugely moving and also have something deep and meaningful to say that can be conveyed to all people, not just those who have that exact experience. I have stood in front of a mirror and been disgusted by what I see, been unable to find anything to wear that flattered my misshapen, hateful body, desperately wished that I was someone else who was better looking and more acceptable. It isn’t the same experience that women have - not by magnitudes - but The Substance gives an in to feel the depths of this beyond my own perspective.
Before I make the movie sound like some kind of downbeat meditation on beauty standards, I want to assure you that this film is gonzo, batshit and bugnuts. I can imagine Fargeat sitting at the end of a cinema aisle, sneaking glances at the faces of those being assaulted by some of her imagery and breaking into a big shit eating grin. This is the work of a provocateur, but not a juvenile edgelord provocateur. Fargeat has something to say and she also wants to gross you out and freak you out, and Jesus Christ does she succeed. I have been around the block, friend, I have seen the most upsetting and bizarre and twisted stuff ever put to film, and the ending of The Substance had even me shocked and surprised. I couldn’t believe I was sitting in a movie theater in a mall watching this; the idea that normal people might wander into The Substance because they like Demi Moore and they figure they’d enjoy a horror movie being subjected to this is as delectable as the movie itself.
This is a great movie. One of the best of the year, easily. Coralie Fargeat catapulted herself to the very top of the list of the best directors working today, and has secured her spot as someone whose movies I will go see no matter what. Just the way she frames a shot is electric, to say nothing of the performances she gets from her actors and the incredible creativity of her depravity. It’s the kind of a movie that can rekindle your passion for the medium, the kind of movie that reminds you of what cinema can do. And it’s just so fucking fun.
I can't wait to see this!