The Substance Movie Review: Margaret Qualley and Demi Moore are two sides of the same coin in the satirical and provocative The Substance. Body horror, in theaters in Italy on October 30, 2024, after the victory at Cannes (best screenplay) and the passage to the Rome Film Fest.
The irony is that most of the gazes will stop at the glossy and, at times, deliberately disgusting film exterior. It will miss the target and in doing so it will prove, paradoxically and provocatively, the correctness of the theses and the solidity of Coralie Fargeat's arguments. The Substance finally arrives in Italian theaters, for I Wonder Pictures, on October 30, 2024, immediately after the screening at the Rome Film Fest and a few months after the triumph at Cannes 2024, with the award for best screenplay.
It is the second film for the French author after the very violent – and with good reason to be – Revenge (2017). In both cases the provocation runs on the thin line of work on the genre – revenge action/thriller in the first case, body horror satire in the second – which overturns assumptions and conventions to tell what it means to be a woman. Yesterday, today, and maybe even tomorrow.
The Substance is a revisitation, with black humor, of the Cronenbergian body horror, stuffed with cinephile references, sarcastic and over the top; it is the exteriority of the story that provokes most of the discussions and it is certainly the least interesting part, certainly the most imperfect. There isn’t and doesn’t seem to be, the slightest bit of subtlety in the exposition of ideas. The exaggerated quotationism reminds us of how derivative this story is, making it go off the rails.
But these are minor considerations. It’s under the skin that the film has something to tell us, and it does it brilliantly. This is thanks to the intelligent use of the camera and, above all, the work of the actors. Starting with the supporting actor Dennis Quaid, and arriving at the two stars, splendidly vulnerable and ferocious, Margaret Qualley and Demi Moore. There are two of them, telling the story of the same woman.
The Substance: the magic potion and what happens after taking it
In addition to the screenplay award, the Cannes Film Festival rewards the film, indirectly but no less gratifyingly, with the warm welcome given to the protagonists, Demi Moore in particular. It is yet another irony in an incredibly ironic film, because the good American actress, who with The Substance is in a position to launch a second career, with premises (if she manages to realize them) more interesting than the first, is the perfect counterpoint to what doesn't happen to her character.
She is an actress in her fifties and her name is Elisabeth Sparkle. She was once a star, she even won an Oscar, but no one would remember her if it weren't for the aerobics program she hosts. In this case, too, the network producer, Harvey (Dennis Quaid), thinks that it's time for her to retire. She's old, they need a younger body - read, desirable - to boost the ratings and update the program to the needs of the times.
Harvey. It's no coincidence that Coralie Fargeat decided to call the producer who, with his vulgar cynicism, sets the film in motion. A man who is no longer young, but no one would dream of removing him from his post, explains to a woman who is no longer young that it is time to step aside. Her physique, and her age, do not match the expectations and desires of the public. Elisabeth knows that it all depends on how her body is interpreted and perceived by society.
She learns that there is a way, not approved by science and to be handled away from prying eyes, that could help her. It is a miracle serum – or cursed, depending on the point of view – called Substance. It allows you to create a new and better version of yourself; younger, fresher, attractive. The transformation – the strong point of Coralie Fargeat's writing and direction is how the change is interpreted – does not make Demi Moore younger, but makes her create (better not reveal how) Margaret Qualley.
The second version of Elisabeth chooses to call herself Sue. Infinitely younger, and unbearably attractive, she is a desire machine built to please and satisfy. The problem is that there are two bodies, but the interiority is shared. The two women should recognize each other for what they are, a soul and a body offended by the world, “fractured” and recomposed into opposite and specular versions. They should stick to the procedure and alternate scrupulously – one week, one week the other – but they don’t. The Substance is the story of how things go horribly wrong between Elisabeth and Sue. The decomposition causes an irreparable fracture and the two versions end up fighting each other. It couldn’t work and in fact, it doesn’t work. But why doesn’t it work?
The prying gaze, the weight of expectations, and the authentically pornographic image
American critics are not wrong when they remind us that, of the many proudly displayed influences – geometry and the provocative black humor of Kubrick, Cronenberg, even Hitchcockian incursions – the most important one is not flaunted by Coralie Fargeat, but she makes it living flesh for her film anyway. It is Seconds (1966), the science fiction thriller directed by John Frankenheimer about a middle-aged man, dissatisfied and unhappy, who, as a result of a miraculous surgical operation, is reborn, young and handsome, in the seductive guise of… Rock Hudson.
There, however, the body was only one, with equally problematic outcomes. The keystone of The Substance is the fracture of identity. Demi Moore is reality, the natural progression of time and nature that man cannot accept and that society perceives as merciless and wrong. Margaret Qualley is the desperate response to perception, the young and beautiful body, the second chance, the life not yet contaminated by time. The illusion that things will not end.
Two bodies, the yin and yang of a femininity that is shaky under the siege of diktats and expectations. The taste for provocation, the philosophy of body horror that explains the soul of man by rewriting his body and his language, serves to give depth to the film's discourse and to reassure the viewer. A more concrete and everyday type of representation would have worked less, precisely because it was too close to the truth, too scandalous.
It matters a lot how Coralie Fargeat decided to tell us the truth, that is, in a graphically interesting and psychologically accurate way. To stay afloat in a world that evaluates only in terms of surface and sexual appeal, women tend to break down into opposite forms: how they are and how they should be. They overwhelm their identity to the point of creating a monster, a seductive alternative, artificial but alive, hungry for needs and expectations; the clash is inevitable.
They don't need, Demi Moore in the display of sincere vulnerability, over the top but never caricatured, fierce and avoidant, and Margaret Qualley, sexy and monstrously selfish, to harmonize the pace and make, of two performances, one. They are perfect for the story and functional within the game of similarities and differences. The camera must provide coherence.
If it is true that female identity breaks down into reality and expectations, in response to an external stimulus, it is the gaze of society that the camera must photograph with outrageous sincerity: close, too close, suffocating, without any sense of distance, without respect for the intimacy and modesty of others. Obsessed with the body and the signs of external beauty to the point of considering them the only reality, forgetting the rest, in a logic of commodification of the flesh and denigration of the soul.
It is the siege of the camera, to the body and soul of the characters, the secret of The Substance. Pornography of the image, ostentatiously and provocatively obtained: a body torn to shreds, exhibited with vulgarity, due to the social inability – of everyone, men and women, but especially men – to go beyond. In denouncing the scandalous nature of the gaze, Coralie Fargeat calls into question the complicity of the spectator.
The spectacle always offers itself to the gaze of the spectator. We could choose not to look, we could turn elsewhere, but we don’t. Why? It is the underground strength of the film, beyond the exaggerated tones and the loaded frame, the provocative relationship established with the spectator in staging an image that is at the same time denunciation and redemption, problem, and solution. We are the protagonists of The Substance.
The Substance: evaluation and conclusion
A body horror sui generis, loaded and sarcastic, The Substance hides its vitality under a skin, a surface, a narrative, made of beauty and disgust, provocation and vulnerability. It confirms the appeal, also in an authorial key, of the very successful Margaret Qualley. It gives