THE SUBSTANCE (2024)
“Pretty girls should ALWAYS smile!”
Director: Coralie Fargeat
Writer: Coralie Fargeat
Cinematography: Benjamin Cracun
Editors: Jerome Eltabet, Coralie Fargeat, Valentin Feron
Music: Raffertie
Notable Cast: Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid, Robin Greer
What’s this? Another movie directed by a chick and her name doesn’t rhyme with Gathryn Tigelow? We’re living in quite interesting times, my friends. As with Love Lies Bleeding, this flick has amazing music, dope shots, two female leads, and lots of gory shit.
I’m excited for this new generation already showing me something, cause female directors thus far have been pretty pedestrian when you really get down to it. Most male directors suck too, so this isn’t a sex thing, it’s just a fact. Because there’s such a drastically smaller sample size of female directors than male, of course there’ll only end up being a couple of really good ones.
It’s called math.
But unlike Love Lies Bleeding, the film we’re here to discuss today is not my favorite film of 2024. Nor would it be in any other year. Not even sure I’ll buy it on Blu when it comes out. But it is fucking interesting. And perfectly plays into some of my obsessions about Hollywood and vanity, actresses aging out of roles, and getting major plastic surgery in a vain attempt to reverse time…
There are potent metaphors contained herein, and it happened that I saw the film at quite an interesting point in my timeline.
A couple of months before I saw the flick, I started taking this testosterone replacement therapy that consists of bio-available pellets surgically inserted subcutaneously right above your buttocks (am I the only one who says “ice cream” in Forrest Gump’s accent when they hear the word “buttocks?”). The TRT promises to make me feel younger, more vibrant, in a word… better.
Sound familiar?
In conjunction with that, I began a weekly microdose of Tirzepatide, aka, Mounjaro. It’s like Ozempic, just better. Zero side effects, save one, complete lack of hunger. It’s bizarre. Anyway, you inject yourself, either in your stomach or the side of your thigh, once a week.
That is, every 7 days.
Sound familiar?
All this is going on, and then, 3 days after my wife and I watched this movie, she was to have abdominoplasty, sometimes referred to as a “tummy tuck.” Her plastic surgeon is the same woman who administered my TRT and gave me the Mounjaro, she’s fantastic. DM me for her deets.
My wife’s surgery was successful, but when she came home, she had these “drains,” little clear tubes coming out of her body that deposited excess fluid into two plastic bags hanging on her waist. Gnarly shit. But then… we, uh, had to change her dressings, and I saw the meaty, fresh scar and stitching real up close and personal.
Amazing this is modern medicine, as it looks positively barbaric. Medieval. We had to detach her drain bags and empty them into a cup to measure how much fluid was being excreted.
Every time I did it, I would say in a deep voice, “This is… The Substance” and do that Substance music sting… thing.
My wife has a good sense of humor and puts up with my weirdness. She’s very sweet.
All of this is to say what informed my viewing of what turned out to be a very daring, very stylish, but kind of flabby, genre flick.
The Substance is an AMAZING 90-minute film. The only problem? It’s 140 minutes long.
Yeah, you read that right, what is at heart a genre exploitation flick filled with tits, ass and gore galore clocks in at nearly 2 and a half motherfucking hours!
That’s just wrong. It’s an insult to your audience.
But, before we get there, let us begin, as we always do around these parts, with the 1ST 5 Minutes, and see if it turns out to be emblematic of the film itself.
1ST 5 MINUTES
Super motherfucking annoying, but for some reason clips from this flick are hard to come by, especially the opening, which is insane. Apologies, folx, I’m doing my best…
After the requisite 5,068 production company slates that have become de rigueur for these types of flicks, we get our first image, an egg yolk sitting on a white surface. A surgical gloved hand enters frame holding a small syringe with a green liquid. The egg yolk is injected and after a moment spontaneously doubles itself, leaving two egg yolks in frame.
Interesting. Nice visual cue of what we’re dealing with here. It looks nice, as most of this film does. The cinematography by Benjamin Cracun is phenomenal throughout this picture, as is the shot design by director Coralie Fargeat. This film is nothing if not striking looking. I appreciate that attention to detail.
As the shot and lens selection also illustrates underlying themes that I will elucidate momentarily. Fargeat is a fantastic director, that I can say. It just feels she’s not ruthless enough with her own writing and editing. Always a danger to fall in love with your own material. Obviously, you have to love your work, but as with children, just because you love them doesn’t mean you don’t discipline them when the time arises.
Same goes for screenwriting. A first draft, while notable, means next to nothing. It is in the rewrite process that a script, and eventual film, truly takes shape. And one must be cutthroat when evaluating one’s own writing. Great, you really like that one scene, it came out well in your mind, but is it necessary? Would its absence be felt? These are important questions writers grapple over. Would be curious to see the first draft of this script. As it is, I like this opening bit with the egg yolk, but is it necessary? Not really.
We then fade to black and then fade in on an overhead shot of a blank square on a sidewalk that we quickly surmise is going to be a new star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Los Angeles. In one continuous shot that encompasses years, we see the construction of the star itself in the cement (amazing) for a celebrity named Elisabeth Sparkle, all the way to the night the star is unveiled, with tons of press and photographers and fans screaming, to tourists stopping by the star to take a picture, to it slowly being ignored, then fading, and cracking, until finally someone drops a sloppy hamburger with the fixings right on the star. SPLAT!
It’s a potent metaphor, and very well done, except for two miscues, which we’ll see end up being a theme with this movie. Great shit that is almost always undercut by a little something that takes you out of the picture. In this fantastic sequence, where we see the star aging and cracking, at one point it rains heavily on it, which, okay, it does pour in Los Angeles from time to time. Rare, but it does happen.
And then a moment later, is that… is there snow falling and accumulating on the star? HUH? My most charitable view here is that it is ash from a wildfire? I don’t know, looks like snow to me, which is fucking insanely stupid.
“Oh my God, this is amazing… oh Jesus, come on, that is so fucking dumb! What were they thinking?” could be the tagline for this flick.
The Hollywood star sequence segues nicely, using the sound of jackhammers on the street, to a fitness studio where we see Demi Moore as Elisabeth Sparkle leading a workout routine for some TV show, complete with leg warmers and lots of spandex. Is this a flashback? What is going on here? Is she supposed to be like a Jane Fonda type? Ok, but does this take place in the 80’s? Who the fuck is watching aerobics shows in 2024? And leg warmers? Very 80’s.
One of the charms of this flick is how it really embodies its own world. This film does not take place in our Universe. Is it an alternate reality? Or perhaps an alternate dimension? Or maybe something else entirely?
In any event, the world of this film seems to mix elements of the past 40 years in a blender. You got people reading newspapers, using corded land lines, while the occasional smart phone or flat screen TV or USB drive pops up.
Clearly, we’re not in Kansas. But where are we?
The rest of the flick
Where indeed…
I have not looked up anything about this flick. I have read no reviews. All I know is when I Googled it to find the IMDb page, I briefly saw a few headlines proclaiming one a hater of women if you don’t unabashedly and unreservedly love this flick.
Fucking hilarious.
Go fuck yourself.
I, for one, think Fargeat did a marvelous job of toeing the line between entertainment and polemic. These far Left commie douchebags who dominate Hollywood have let their politics become everything, to the point they can’t tell compelling stories anymore. Everything has to be about THE MESSAGE, and enforcing THE MESSAGE.
Fuck. That.
Regardless, I have not seen any theories or deep dives or analyses of The Substance. All of these are my own theories, though I’m sure there has to be some who’ve interpreted the film in the way I have.
Before we get there though, our workout scene finishes, we find out Elisabeth’s just turned 50, and her boss, the oily, reptilian Harvey (natch), played by a deliciously over the top Dennis Quaid (who clearly understood what movie he was making) wants to replace her on the show. She’s too old.
He wears garish suits throughout and is clearly a Devil-like figure in the story, literally and figuratively. Check that studio hallway drenched in red.
On her drive home after being fired (in a nauseating scene involving Quaid eating stomach churning amounts of shrimp, and featuring both a fly on his neck (death) and that same fly, presumably, drowning in Elisabeth’s drink. A little on the nose, but okay…), Elisabeth is distracted by her show’s billboard being ripped down, and is t-boned at an intersection, sending her car tumbling end over end
Miraculously, she survives…
Or does she?
***************THERE BE SPOILERS AHEAD***********************
Now, this is currently a new-ish movie, so I’m still working out this theory, but it ultimately boils down to this: Elisabeth died in that car wreck, and the rest of the film is her journey through Purgatory, until finally ascending to Heaven at the end.
It’s the only way you can make sense of a lot of what happens in this film, especially the seemingly ridiculous third act, which we’ll get to in a bit.
Only one problem, before the crash, we’ve already seen the weird timeline stuff, with an 80’s workout show while Quaid has a smartphone. It’s quite possible the entire film is her purgatorial journey through her own self-destructive vanity.
Again, I haven’t fully worked it out as I have only seen the film twice. But to me there’s no way this film is taking place in anything but the fever dream imagination of a dying celebrity who valued youth and beauty above all else.
As it is, Elisabeth goes to the hospital, where she doesn’t have a scratch on her. After the doctor leaves, a male nurse, played by a very creepy, surgified looking actor named Robin Greer, stops her from getting dressed, and inspects her spine, making cryptic statements about how she’s a perfect candidate. He hands Elisabeth her yellow jacket (very prominent and used throughout the film to connote a feeling of sickness and disease, namely, the disease of vanity) and leaves before she can even lay eyes on him.
Once on the street, she realizes something odd is in her pocket, takes it out to reveal a USB drive wrapped in a piece of paper that says “It Changed My Life.” On the USB drive in big capital letters, THE SUBSTANCE.
Amazing.
This is quickly followed by an unlikely and kind of goofy run in with an old school mate of Elisabeth’s, some dork named Fred. He says how it would be great to catch up and gives her his number by WRITING IT ON A PIECE OF PAPER. Again, this is notable because in this day and age you’d just take your phone out and write it down. Who the hell carries pens in their pockets anymore? The anachronisms pile up the more this movie progresses, only further proving my theory that at the very least we’re in an alternate reality, or rather, an alternate dimension, and that dimension is Purgatory.
Think about it, Sparkle is some huge star, even if she is on the downslope, they reference the fact she’s an Oscar winner and she’s been on this top fitness show for years, making tons of money. Yet, she has no agent? No assistant? No hangers on? No friends? NO NOTHING?!?!
Come on.
When I first watched this, I thought it was stupid, but when looked at through the Purgatory filter, it’s not stupid, because in Purgatory you are ALONE and need to find your way to Heaven before getting lost in your own Hell.
I love the scene at her house when she watches what’s on the USB stick. The Substance commercial, as it were, is fantastic. Amazing music by Raffertie (whose tunes really elevate this flick and carry it through), love the unseen Doctor’s voice (is it the male nurse from the hospital?), it’s just fantastically well done and provocative and fascinating. It also has my Favorite Line in the whole film, or I guess lines is more appropriate, as it is the entire sales pitch.
“Have you ever dreamt of a better version of yourself? Younger, more beautiful, more perfect. One single injection unlocks your DNA, starting a new cellular division, that will release another version of yourself. This is… the Substance. You are the matrix. Everything comes from you. Everything is you. This is simply a better version of yourself. You just have to share. One week for one and one week for the other. A perfect balance of seven days each. The one and only thing not to forget: You. Are. One. You can't escape from yourself.”
How great is that? Fargeat did a fantastic job finding this voice actor. He’s a real highlight anytime you hear him. Hard to leave this film and not have, “This is… The Substance” repeating over and over in your head.
In true movie character fashion, Elisabeth tosses the USB drive in the trash, but we all know how this will play out. I kind of despise these kinds of plot mechanics. Now we’re just waiting for her to take it. How she decides to is not really interesting cause we already know she is feeling old and worthless and past her prime, so a scene of her in a bar being completely ignored doesn’t really land cause this fact pattern has already been established, and I just don’t believe for a second that a star this big could go out and just be isolated like that.
While I find Demi Moore very surgified, she’s still a hot woman for her age. I think it’s a bit ridiculous to cast a woman in her 60’s to play someone who just turned 50, but whatever. Elisabeth’s a cougar, has money, and fame/notoriety.
In Los Angeles, that is in VERY high demand amongst the hustlers and ladder climbing shitbags that populate that hellscape. More proof that this is not a real world, aside from the sci-fi medicine angle. A lot of sci-fi takes place in recognizable realities where the only thing off would be the existence of The Substance, for instance. But not here, this clearly takes place in a heightened reality of the mind.
Eventually she calls the number, which is answered by the same voice in the video, who tells her to go to an address down some alley. All very ridiculous, but entertaining. Again, she’d have assistants and shit to go do this for her, she wouldn’t do it herself and BY herself, especially when she sees how sketchy it all is.
Of course, she goes inside this run down place where the automatic steel door doesn’t even open properly. I do like how there is graffiti on the walls showing egg yolks. And I like how Fargeat doesn’t focus on it in the least, like, say, Elisabeth looking at the wall and getting a cutaway to a CU of it. No, it’s all very subtle and nicely played. And then in this grimy place, of course, there’s a stark white room where she retrieves her Substance kit from a bank of lockers, only two of which have identifying numbers.
I give Demi Moore a lot of credit for essaying this role. She does not look good throughout a lot of this, and is purposely seen in some quite harsh lighting conditions that really highlight her age. Added to which, all her surgery creates a bit of a garish sight, especially when we see her twisted mirror image as she stares at herself in her laboratory like bathroom (which becomes an actual science lab for most of the film. Again, a bit on the nose but serving a good purpose, thematically and dramatically). Moore looks weird as fuck. Her surgery has not aged well. But it all serves the story in such a compelling fashion that it becomes a revelation. Raw does not even begin to describe her performance.
My Favorite Shot in a movie full of very nice shots is a simple one the night Elisabeth decides to take The Substance. It is a shot of a palm tree, looking up at its fronds as they sway in the night breeze. The way the palm tree seems to glow as it blows in the wind is a very striking image and for some reason really stayed with me after the film. Almost looks like the palm tree was drenched in ink before they yelled “Action.”
Great shit.
I love the scene where she opens The Substance kit, with Fargeat doing her own version of a YouTube unboxing video. Love the Apple-like packaging for The Substance’s many steps. Really cool shit. Design work in this film is phenomenal.
One thing that nagged at me, though, was the absence of any instructions in the kit. Can I just get one brief shot of a list of instructions in the background? Because aside from injecting The Substance (how does she know how much to inject? Why is there more left if it is a single use type of thing?) how the fuck would she or the coming Sue know what the fuck to do thereafter?
It’s stupid shit like this that takes me out of a film.
Yes, I can believe some humanoid creature can emanate from someone’s spine, but I cannot believe regular people just know how to do transfusions and how you need to stick a GIANT FUCKING NEEDLE in Elisabeth’s back for the stabilizer juice! I mean, come on, how the fuck do you not even give lip service to this shit? Wild.
In any event, the scene where Margaret Qualley’s Sue is born from Elisabeth’s split open back is great. Really good visual and sound effects (LOVE the second eyeball squeezing in), extremely well done, with Raffertie’s fantastic score underlining the tension. I love the reveal from Sue’s POV, and her staring at herself in the mirror, inspecting her new body, marveling at how fresh and nubile her breasts and butt and legs are. She also has the same small reddish birthmark as the Male Nurse who gave Elisabeth The Substance USB. Nice little detail that is never verbalized or intellectualized.
We then get a quite gratuitous scene of Sue sewing up Elisabeth’s back. Again, she knows how to do stitches and has no visceral reaction to this sight of someone with their fucking back split open. Ok. But then she also immediately knows to start feeding Elisabeth, and how.
I don’t know, whatever. Let’s just go with it, I guess.
One of my issues with the casting is Margaret Qualley. While I think she does a great job, and looks fantastic for the most part, what exactly is The Substance doing? Is Sue supposed to be a younger version of Elisabeth or what? Or is she more like a perfected child? Because her coloring and skin tone is wildly different from Elisabeth’s, different eye color, different hair color and texture, freckle-y, and looks NOTHING like Elisabeth.
Qualley is a cute chick, don’t get me wrong, but she suffers from the same problem as Elle Fanning in Refn’s Neon Demon. If you’re going to have a character who is the most insanely beautiful person anyone in the world of the film has seen, where she quite literally takes people’s breath away, you cannot cast Elle fucking Fanning.
Same with Qualley here. She’s cute, but an “IT” girl she is not. Aside from her heavy brow, check out those close ups of her when she is smiling wide. What is that? YELLOW TEETH on the sides?
WHAT?
How the fuck do they not bleach this chick’s teeth before filming? HOW? Demi Moore’s Chiclet teeth are nearly fluorescent they’re so white, but when her more beautiful, more perfect version is born, she has yellow fucking teeth when she smiles? Goddamn, man.
Am I the only one who gives a shit about this kind of thing?
What ensues, no pun intended, is a battle of wills between Elisabeth and her Frankenstein-ian creation, Sue, as they are forced to go into a sort of alternating hibernation or stasis every 7 days to maintain the balance as required by the Substance. Sue has 7 days, then Elisabeth has 7 days, you get the idea.
I wonder, if they actually maintained the balance, would Sue age? Does she stay young? What even is she? Would she register as human at the hospital?
The Sue segments are entertaining as far as they go, with her quickly embracing her newfound youth and vigor, and ultimately replacing Elisabeth on her own workout show. Renamed, Pump It Up, she becomes an overnight sensation.
No reason is given as to why anyone would give a rat’s ass, so let’s just accept it.
Aside from ogling her body as she twerks and dances, Sue has exactly zero personality or character development. For that matter, neither does Elisabeth. It’s a failure of the script to not clearly define these characters, or even alert us as to whether they even know what the other is up to.
It seems like they have no memory of each other’s exploits despite them being “one,” as the doctor keeps reminding them. It’s weird, they feel like completely separate entities. While a little mystery is good, there’s just too many unexplainable things here to be dramatically satisfying.
Unless it is a purgatorial fever dream of a dying Elisabeth, then it all makes sense, I guess…
Take the billboard of Sue’s new show that is placed right outside Elisabeth’s expansive apartment window overlooking L.A. This is a giant billboard that was not there just a day before, yet somehow this utter behemoth was erected overnight? And to serve what purpose? Who is this advertising to except Elisabeth and a few of her neighbors? It’s ridiculous.
Except if it is a fever dream, then it makes perfect sense why this billboard is placed there, it’s to torture Elisabeth.
One thing that makes no sense at all, fever dream or not, is Sue somehow building a hidden room off Elisabeth’s bathroom all by herself in less than the 7 days she has in her cycle. What is the purpose of this? Why can’t she just use a closet if she needs to hide the dormant Elisabeth? How the fuck can Sue do all this by herself? It’s so stupid and nearly derails the film, as it could have been completely cut out and not effect the narrative one iota. Sequences like this are why the film is 140 minutes long. Just pointless shit.
Eventually, Sue does not want to give up her life every 7 days, and starts to throw the balance off course. Each time she does this, Elisabeth ages rapidly, prematurely, and unevenly. The first time, Sue steals a day and it turns Elisabeth’s finger into that of an 80 year old’s!
Feeling awful, she decides to take up that old classmate of hers on his offer of a date. Maybe that will cheer her up. Yeah… no.
Which leads to my Favorite Scene in the whole movie. Elisabeth gets herself all done up for the date, and she looks great (but a bit like Caitlyn Jenner, no?), but just as she is about to leave, she spies Sue just laying there, dormant, docile, but also beautiful and young. Elisabeth stares at Sue, then goes back to the mirror and stares at herself, tries to make herself look “better.”
And then as she tries to leave again, she sees the billboard of Sue, and again goes to the bathroom to fix herself. Next time she catches her reflection in the doorknob.
This keeps repeating until finally Elisabeth is at the mirror wiping all the makeup off her face violently and aggressively. Fred’s worried texts go unanswered as the time of their date has come and gone.
It’s a masterful sequence depicting the depths some go to in the name of vanity and adoration. Demi Moore fucking kills it here. Extremely well done and upsetting scene. Shit like this is part of the “great 90 minute movie” contained in the “not bad 140 minute movie.”
Sue stealing time from Elisabeth continues, and to me, continues a bit too long for my tastes. Could have done with one less “Elisabeth wakes up older” sequence, notably the one where Elisabeth goes nuts making food and covering all her windows so she doesn’t have to see the Sue billboard. Elisabeth ends up scrambling eggs all over her face (eggs again) as she rages out over Sue talking shit about her on some lame talk show hosted by a dime store Arsenio Hall.
Admittedly, this sequence leads into Sue flipping out and deciding to drain Elisabeth of every ounce of stablilizer juice her increasingly infected back wound injection site can muster. It’s disgusting. If you have a fear of needles, this may be the scariest movie you could ever possibly see.
Sue fills a ton of mason jars with the spine juice and we cut to months later, where she’s getting ready to host a huge New Year’s Eve show (I mean, come on, who DOESN’T want to EXERCISE on New Year’s Eve?!). She’s been “out” as Sue this whole time, while Elisabeth wastes away in God knows what condition at this point.
Completely out of Stabilizer juice, Sue calls the Doctor in a panic, but he calmly informs her she needs to switch to replenish the juice. Reluctantly, she does, and Elisabeth wakes up a bald, hunched over husk of a very, very, very old woman, who, if we’re being honest with ourselves, wouldn’t be able to move much, if at all, much less do all the shit this old broad ends up doing.
On the first go around with this flick, before I formulated my Purgatory theory, the movie completely lost me here. It descends into such absurdity and bullshit, as this decrepit old hunchback is running around, yes, running, and dragging bodies and doing shit like she’s 30 years old.
It is SO FUCKING STUPID.
But once I apply the filter of my theory, it’s not stupid.
Elisabeth calls the Doctor and tells him she wants to end the experiment. She picks up the fluid that she will have to inject into Sue in order to kill her and be done with the switching, but Elisabeth can’t do it. She is too addicted to the adoration Sue brings them, too addicted to the rush of being young and nubile again. And as the fluid makes its way into Sue, Elisabeth sees the billboard advertising “their” big night, and pulls the syringe from Sue’s arm, worried it may be too late. Elisabeth just can’t quit the spotlight. Sad.
But Sue jolts awake and the two of them come face to face, both conscious, for the first time in the film, and it is thrilling. Sue sees the syringe meant to kill her, and just fucking loses it. What ensues is a fantastic fight to the death as Sue stops at nothing to destroy her old self, culminating in a brutal moment where Sue repeatedly, and I mean repeatedly smashes Elisabeth’s old, decrepit skull into a mirror until her face is complete pulp.
What I love about this sequence, and the film in general, is the genius way Fargeat dramatizes the struggle aging, vainglorious women go through as their beauty fades, and the futile attempts they engage in to maintain the little youth that remains.
The entire film is one long metaphor for plastic surgery.
To wit: Elisabeth goes in for her first “procedure” to look “younger,” and at first, it works marvelously. She looks great. She feels great. But it doesn’t last. Here, it’s 7 days until a refresh is needed, in real life it could be years, but a refresh will always be needed as that newly stretched skin will inevitably begin to sag.
As much as Sue (youth) wants to exist, Elisabeth (age) keeps fucking it up. So, women continue to keep chasing that elusive youthful look, but unlike the first procedure, every subsequent one makes you, oddly, look older, not younger.
For Elisabeth, it’s her finger first, then half her body, then her entire body. For women in the real world, take Kylie Jenner, for instance, she was kind of the ugly sister, and then she got a bunch of shit done and looked amazing… at first. Total transformation, much like Elisabeth turning into Sue.
But then she didn’t stop getting surgery, much like Elisabeth doesn’t stop with the Substance, and now she looks like she’s in her 40’s, despite being only 27. Same with Elisabeth, because she didn’t stop, she looks like an old lady despite being only 50.
The rage Sue feels at Elisabeth, the fury with which she slams Elisabeth’s head into that mirror (“mirror mirror on the wall…”), is that not the same fury certain women feel as they age out and their beauty is no longer a commodity which they can trade? The young version of you hates the old version of you. When she’s slamming her head into that mirror it’s a “mirror” image of the rage Elisabeth feels toward herself when she looks in that damn mirror.
This is great cinema.
Sue begins to fall apart due to Elisabeth, her matrix, being dead, and right before her big New Year’s Eve show to boot. In another ridiculous bit, Sue RUNS home from the studio in a gigantic ball gown.
Once home, she finds the remaining green juice that started this whole thing off in the first place, and quickly injects herself, hoping a fresh, beautiful version of herself will pop out. But that’s not what happens, either here in this sci-fi universe, or in the real world.
In another great bit, Sue literally turns into a monster (love the shot with not just two, but numerous eyeballs crowding in), namely, Monstro Elisasue, a corollary for those old women you see on Instagram, addicted to plastic surgery, who look like literal monsters.
Fantastic use of metaphor in a brash, cinematic way. LOVE the first look Elisasue gets of herself in the mirror. It’s a quick flash with a music sting and it is amazing.
As is the reveal of Elisabeth’s face, frozen in a sort of rictus scream on Elisasue’s back. Such a great shot the way it tracks back to show the horror this poor woman is going through.
And not for nothing, but the design and execution of the Elisasue creature is fantastic. Truly unsettling, upsetting, and oddly, sentimental. I’m almost in tears as Elisasue sits in the front of the mirror, trying to make herself pretty for the big New Year’s show, first by using a flat iron on her few remaining strands of hair, and then putting earrings on by just stabbing them into her flesh.
The monster trying in vain to pretty herself. Rough shit.
In a brilliant bit, she goes over to the giant portrait of Elisabeth on the wall, that has hung like a spectre over the entire film, and breaks the glass to rip the head off the photo, put lipstick on it and paste it to her face.
Great shit.
Not great? Monstro Elisasue making it BACK to the studio (presumably walking there), and being let in like it’s nothing. No security, no production assistants, nothing. She just gets back to the studio somehow, and not only gets in, but is able to make her way up to the stage in front of the audience and cameras without being stopped by anyone, and actually seems to be assisted at certain points.
Beyond dumb.
Unless you put my Purgatory filter on, then it makes complete sense. In a fever dream, logic goes out the window, replaced by pure emotion and feeling. And the emotion and feeling of this bit with her on stage is fantastic.
The picture she glued to her face falls off (I particularly love the call back to the Sue audition scene with the two scumbag casting directors, “everything sure is in the right place this time”), revealing her true visage, sending the audience into paroxysms of rage and shock.
Elisasue tries to calm them down, confusedly proclaiming, “I’m Sue, I’m Elisabeth” in a contorted, monstrous voice. One of the audience members grabs a makeshift weapon and lops Elisasue’s head clean off, only for that head to be replaced by another, even uglier “head.”
Her arm then gets chopped off and she sprays the audience with more blood than could ever be contained within her body. Again, makes no sense unless my theory is in operation.
It’s some real grand guignol shit.
Elisasue somehow escapes the studio, but is in very bad shape, unstable, barely able to hold this new body together. She finally collapses on Hollywood Blvd into a giant pile of goo, with only one “sentient” piece of goo remaining, containing Elisabeth’s face on its back.
The goo struggles to crawl down Hollywood Blvd, and finally comes to a rest on Elisabeth Sparkle’s fading star.
Elisabeth, in her final moment of lucidity, if we could call it that, imagines she is back in the spotlight, the object of attention and adoration, one last time, before the goo, along with her face, melts into a non-descript liquid, which is then summarily cleaned away by a street sweeper.
I know the light on her face is supposed to be one final spotlight for the aging star before she dies, but to me, using my filter, it is the light of God, the signal that her journey through a personal Purgatory of vanity is over, and she can now ascend to Heaven and finally be at peace.
Potent themes.
Thankfully, a woman filmmaker with immense talent brought this to us. Had this same exact film been done by a man, I think the reactions would be quite different. All the gratuitous shots of nudity, especially Qualley, would be attacked as emblematic of the male gaze. I’m sure they’d call the film sexist and misogynist. But because it is directed by a woman, you are now sexist and misogynist if you DON’T like the film.
You know what? Fuck that post-modern bullshit. The film is the film, no matter who made it. And as it is, we have a truly fantastic 90 minute film surrounded by 50 minutes of flab that could be excised like so much saggy skin.
The One Sheet
Not great posters for this flick, unfortunately. I don’t think they understood the kind of film they had, or how they wanted to sell it.
This first poster is okay, but it really goes for the horror/gore angle with nary a hint of the brilliant subtext within.
The second poster of the chicken leg alludes to scenes in the film I did not highlight, namely, Elisabeth and Sue having vivid, bizarre dreams right before they wake up from their 7 day slumber. One time it’s all these guts pouring out of Sue’s dress, another it is her having a chicken leg wedged inside the skin of her ass, necessitating her to move it under the skin until pulling it out through her belly button. But as a poster image? Come on.
Same with this next one. Sue’s leotard? Okay, and? What fucking movie are they selling? What is supposed to be my takeaway from seeing this poster?
This fourth one with the eggs is better, but also doesn’t really get at what makes the film good. I could see buying this poster AFTER seeing the film and liking it, but as an advertisement to get you in the theater? I don’t think so.
This last poster has shades of The Tree of Life, but not as successful. Most of the images used are good, I particularly like the top row of images, and the CU of Dennis Quaid smoking the cig (I really didn’t get too much into Quaid in this piece. He’s good, really hams it up, and I really love the way they shoot and edit all his scenes in a hyperreal way with gross out sound design and some quick cutting that is very effective at selling his character as the malevolent deity he clearly is), but you use a CU of an eyeball and DON’T use the double eyeball image? Come on. How is that not seriously the main image for this film? They really dropped the ball with this marketing. For shame, Mubi, FOR SHAME!
And that does it for The Substance. A great metaphor for plastic surgery addicts, utilizing an actress who herself is a plastic surgery addict, in a genius bit of meta commentary on the entertainment industry specifically and the broader plastic surgery chum feeder in general.
Fargeat did a great job, but she is in dire need of a strong editor or producer to rein her in a bit. This film did not need to be 140 minutes long. Having said that, the film left A LOT of room for future installments to really explore this world Fargeat created. She came up with an incredible concept, but despite her adept use of the plastic surgery metaphor, she really didn’t go balls to the wall with such a bonkers concept.
I feel future filmmakers, or even Fargeat herself, will make subsequent installments that really take the idea in the wild directions it could go.
Like, what if Elisabeth, and not Sue, injected herself again with the Activator juice?
What would happen to Sue if Elisabeth stayed out for months instead?
Can Elisabeth extract juice from Sue’s back and inject herself? What would happen?
Where is this mysterious Doctor? Who does he work for?
Where do they make this shit? Why give it for free?
Are they surveilling these test subjects? (I didn’t get into the scene where Elisabeth encounters an old man, who it is revealed is the other recipient of the Substance (the male nurse in the beginning is this old guy’s “Sue"). The reason I didn’t is not because this isn’t an interesting route to explore, but because the dialogue and acting of who they got for the old man is TERRIBLE! And also because Elisabeth seems to have no interest in this guy or the answers he may be able to provide. Yet another scene that is not important, goes nowhere, and could easily be edited out.)
How come no one does a stakeout of that alley to see if anyone else comes and goes?
I mean, this is just shit off the top of my head. If you really dig into it, you can go very deep.
That is, if we accept this as an actual world and not the fever dream it actually is.
Which is why it’s so weird to me that this film won BEST SCREENPLAY at the Cannes Film Festival! I’d like to say it’s just cause Fargeat herself is French and they want to reward French filmmakers, especially women, because I am hard pressed to find any other reasons why this would get a best script nom, of all things. There’s hardly any good dialogue, zero character development, and a lot of shit that could have been cut and rearranged to make a much tighter film. If this film was written and directed by Joe Neckbone there’s no fucking way it wins this award.
NO. FUCKING. WAY.
As it is, we have just the one film. And the 1ST 5 Minutes really are pretty emblematic of the whole film, in that you have great music, great cinematography (though a bit derivative of Kubrick, and not in any way that has any thematic sense aside from “hey that red hallway looks dope with a wide lens” or “ah, let’s do some 2001 light show shit when they first take The Substance”), that amazing Hollywood Star sequence, but some of it undone by goofy shit.
That’s the film in a nutshell, great shit with silly shit always nibbling around the edges.
While I enjoyed the film much more the second time, I won’t lie, even after that ridiculous first showing before I developed my theory, the flick stayed with me.
It is extremely compelling.
And the reason for that is how close this hits to home.
My wife likes to use plastic surgery in a minimal way to augment her looks and maintain her admittedly smoking hot youth. But sometimes it goes wrong, and while it is never on the level of what happens here, it definitely does make her feel monstrous at times.
The tummy tuck came out well in terms of the surgery, but the incision was made about an inch too high for my wife’s taste (the doctor disagrees, obvs), and now the scar is visible when she wears bikinis. Looking good in a bikini was the MAIN reason she got this procedure and now she’s at the point she never wants to wear a bikini again.
And why?
Because she feels monstrous! One particular day was very rough emotionally. And when you’re married, you experience that emotional pain through osmosis. It was bad. She was inconsolable, in tears, depressed. It was really bad.
You do this procedure to feel younger and better, but it has the exact opposite effect.
Sound familiar?
And much like Elisabeth trying and failing to kill Sue (i.e. stop getting surgery and just accept your age and looks), despite what this procedure has done to her, my wife eventually got over her scar issues (it’s not that bad, but it’s not my body, it’s hers) and is now already planning her next procedure, a mini face lift.
The Substance is nothing if not a direct and chilling mirror of our youth and looks obsessed culture. And how even getting “botched” won’t stop the addiction.
I just wish the film was tighter, leaner, better.
Maybe we can inject The Substance into the film stock and get a perfect version of this film?
In any event, see you in two gnarly hanging tit sacks…