It’s not often that I can sum up my thoughts on a movie in one sentence, but this is one of those times.
The Substance is what you would get if David Cronenberg directed Sunset Boulevard.
Obviously I need to write more about the new film from French writer/director/producer Coralie Fargeat, but that’s the gist of it. It is a film that is fantastical in both outlook and execution, but is primarily concerned with a down-to-earth problem that affects millions of people: body dysmorphia.
The Substance starts with a very simple image that both tells you exactly what its eponymous substance does and establishes the film’s color palette. A single egg yolk is on a blue-green background. A syringe filled with a green substance (the universal horror/sci-fi film symbol for “This stuff is exotic, powerful, and dangerous”) injects the egg yolk. A few seconds later, the yolk divides, and a second yolk, identical to the first, appears right next to it.
The implications of this extremely basic but powerful image will play out over the next 141 minutes. We then go to a time lapse of a crew working on a patch of concrete. Slowly, their assignment emerges from the little details of their craft. They’re making one of the stars on Hollywood Boulevard. It’s dedicated to Elisabeth Sparkle.
Los Angelinos have the same attitude towards the Walk of Fame that Memphians have about Graceland. It’s for tourists, and it’s terminally tacky. But I love the Walk of Fame and make a point to visit it when I’m in Hollywood. It’s very revealing about the real nature of the American film industry and the culture it created. For the last century, we’ve been minting new stars, mostly to give people a reason to go to the movies. When it’s brand-new, the star is the ultimate symbol of success in the entertainment field. But the thing about the Hollywood Walk of Fame is that it’s a public street. If you have a star on Hollywood Boulevard, people walk on your name all day, every day. Most of the 2,798 stars feature familiar names like Lucille Ball or James Cagney. But do you know who Clyde Cook was? Or Gloria DeHaven? Fame can be fleeting, especially for women in Hollywood.
Elisabeth Sparkle’s star is slowly weathered and cracked over the years and the millions of people who walk over it. Finally, in the present day, someone drops a hamburger on it, and it is stained red with ketchup. This is the first hint of red in a film that will soon be dripping with blood.
We never see Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) in her heyday, but through some side dialogue, we learn that she once won an Oscar. These days, she’s doing pretty good for herself, though. She’s got a popular aerobics show reminiscent of Jane Fonda’s Workout. (Fonda won two Oscars, and her Workout series are among the bestselling home video products of all time.) The hall she walks down to get to her studio is lined with images of her past triumphs. But today is her 50th birthday, so she’s getting fired by her producer, the unsubtly named Harvey (Dennis Quaid, dripping slime). In true Hollywood fashion, it doesn’t matter to Harvey that Elisabeth is great at her job and looks amazing. He wants someone younger.
While driving home, distracted after a disgusting lunch with Harvey, she gets into a car wreck. One of the doctors who examines her has a strange air about him and declares that she is a “perfect candidate.” When she gets home, she discovers a thumb drive marked “The Substance” wrapped in a torn piece of paper that says, “It changed my life!”
When she plugs the drive into her TV, she sees an infomercial for The Substance, which promises to make a new, better you. Reluctantly, but almost compulsively, she calls the number on the screen, where a mysterious voice gives her an address in one of the sleazier neighborhoods of L.A. From a group of lockers, she picks out her number, 503, and finds a box with lots of medical equipment and simple, Ikea-like instructions.
There’s a great moment when Elisabeth takes The Substance where Demi Moore does that disappointed “this edible ain’t shit” face, right before it kicks in. The Substance splits Elisabeth in two, with a younger, prettier, and more energetic version emerging from a gaping hole in her back. The younger version, who names herself Sue (Margaret Qualley), must first get to work stitching up the older version’s gaping wound. Elisabeth’s consciousness can live in Sue for only one week at a time, and Sue must have daily injections of stabilizer, which she must harvest from Elisabeth’s inert body.
At first, things go great. Sue tries out for the show which will replace Elisabeth’s show, and immediately gets it. Harvey is glad to work around Sue’s strange one-week-on, one-week-off schedule. The show, now named Pump Up With Sue, is more popular than ever.
But none of this renewed success brings Elisabeth any comfort. She spends most of her non-Sue time watching Sue on television, and becoming increasingly more resentful of her younger, “better” self. For her part, Sue starts to hate reverting to Elisabeth, and starts disobeying The Substance voice’s explicit instructions not to try to stay young longer than a week. This has disastrous and extremely gross consequences for both of them.
Fargeat has a wicked satirical sense and an unerring eye for disorienting shots. The close-ups of gyrating body parts and Moore and Qualley’s near-constant nudity quickly go from titillating to disquieting. When The Substance starts to play havoc with Elisabeth’s body, Fargeat shoots the results as unsparingly as any Cronenberg gross-out fest.
The Substance is a profound work of body horror about the lengths women will go to to feel attractive in the toxic patriarchy of celebrity culture. It’s a comment on both the abusive culture created by the Harvey Weinsteins of the world and on the miracle drugs like Ozempic, which promise to make you skinny and shiny without consequence, at least if you can afford it. To paraphrase Cronenberg’s Videodrome, The Substance has a philosophy, and that’s what makes it dangerous.
The Substance
Now playing
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