As if there was any doubt, Coralie Fargeat's “The Substance” is the wildest and most outrageous film that played at MIFF this year. It is loud, bombastic, in your face, offensive, graphic, bloody and very, very entertaining. The film is essentially about the extreme lengths women go (and where men expect them to go), all in the name of looking young and beautiful, but by the end of it, it morphs into a bloody and violent body horror monstrosity that knows no extremes. It is totally unhinged and all the better for it. It is the kind of film David Cronenberg used to make in his prime, although lacking the subtlety of that master director.
I was absolutely bowled over with just how great Demi Moore was in “The Substance”, especially since she is an actress I have never been overly impressed with in the past. She has to go to a number of very vulnerable places during the film, with her rarely given a chance to look “good”, not to mention the regular and extended nude scenes that she must perform. She is so brave and such a good sport, and I honestly cannot remember her being better (or more unhinged). The character of Elisabeth Sparkle is an intense one, a former star now fading doing anything in her power to stay relevant and to keep the spotlight shining on her, to which she goes to a very extreme length to succeed. “The Substance” works best knowing as little as possible going into it, but it is safe to say that Elisabeth tries an experimental drug that “unlocks her DNA” giving her the ability to birth a new and better version of herself; young, beautiful and talented to the max. Of course there are rules, with the first being that each version only gets seven days in control (whilst the other sits unconscious and naked on the bathroom floor) before they have to switch and let the other take over for the same period of time, whilst the most important rule to remember is that they are ONE; there is no me and her. Soon enough, a power struggle inevitably begins between them both, the rules are forgotten and thus consequences of breaking those rules must be faced.....and those consequences are insane!! Margaret Qualley plays Sue, the younger, hotter variant of Elisabeth, and while she is good, I feel she has less to work with in the role compared to Moore's Elisabeth as she is the eye candy of the film; she pretty much just has to look sexy and smile......at least initially. When Sue determines that she deserves to be in control for more than the seven days, it is scary the lengths she will go to to succeed in her goal (which should come as no surprise, because she is one with Elisabeth who has the same extreme tenacity).
Going into this, I was aware of all the press “The Substance” got from the Cannes Film Festival about how insane it was, but I find a lot of these types of early reviews are often filled with significant hyperbole which rarely match the finished product when finally seen. Therefore, I was not prepared for just how full on “The Substance” was going to be or just how far Coralie Fargeat would go with her idea. No one can say that she did not have the balls to take her idea to it's zenith. I think it is safe to say that after two films, “Revenge” (2017) and now this one, that Fargeat is not what you would call a subtle director. She uses sledge hammer techniques (loud music, extreme images, large onscreen text), but as I intimated earlier, it works really well in “The Substance” because after coming up with such an insane idea, to then pussy foot around it ending up with a watered down product, would have been entirely pointless. She needed to go as big as she possibly could to get the most out of her idea, and she has certainly succeeded in doing that. I do not want to go into too much detail and ruin the fun and surprises “The Substance” has in store for its audiences, but I will say that it goes absolutely insane and by the end is ridiculously bloody and violent. The practical effects are brilliant when the body horror elements begin to take over the film. You are given an early litmus test during the birth of Sue, who arrives out of the spine and back of Elisabeth who then needs to be immediately sewn back together (by Sue) before she bleeds to death. The effects are gooey, gory and impressive......and this is nothing compared to what is to come later in the film. If you find yourself squeamish during this sequence, all I can say is good luck for the rest of the film. The violence within “The Substance” is very full on, and alternates between “fun, horror” violence to an incredibly graphic and disturbing beating that has to be seen to be believed. I think it is the ferocity and intensity of this scene that makes it so shocking, not to mention the realistic effects. Amazingly “The Substance” is also very funny at times too. One of the laugh out loud moments that I loved is towards the end when a relatively new character is putting her earrings on her “ears”, in an attempt to look more beautiful, all while Bernard Herrmann's love theme from “Vertigo” plays over the scene.
Now I mentioned that Fargeat takes her idea as far as it could possibly go, but in my opinion she actually oversteps that line. Personally I think the final ten to fifteen minutes of “The Substance” were not needed, and actually diluted the impact of the story because at this point the film goes full camp and starts to border on the silly or ridiculous. We didn't actually need the New Year's Show, as the lead up to it was extreme enough, but with this sequence (in my opinion) Fargeat goes way too over the top. It was almost like she was having too much fun with her idea and film, that she didn't want it to end, and so continued to find a way for the story to continue no matter how silly it got.
Another aspect of the film that I found questionable was the portrayals of the men who are all shown as idiotic imbeciles. I understand the reason why in relation to the story of the film, in that they see women as sex objects or eye candy or as their own personal play thing with no regard for the actual person or the intelligence inside of them, but by making the men caricatures instead of real characters, it made the point being made too broad. It is also a hard thing to act although in saying that, most of the men do a good job with it and are quite funny in a pathetic way. Dennis Quaid however is absolutely dreadful in this and gets the tone of his performance all wrong. The only male character who is treated with a little respect is the one who shows Elisabeth Sparkle herself some respect, and that is an old classmate's of Elisabeth who states “even now, you are still the most beautiful woman in the world”. It is a genuinely sweet moment, and he even gives her his phone number in a very clumsy manner, not expecting a superstar like Elisabeth to ever give him the time of day. When she does, to organise a date with the gentlemen, this is when her insecurities about her ageing and how she looks really kick in, which leads to her ultimate breakdown.
Overall, Coralie Fargeat's “The Substance” is an extreme bombastic delight about the fear of ageing in an industry that rewards youth and beauty, and what women will do (and men expect them to do) to keep themselves looking this way. It is a hard film to talk about, as the fun is had in experiencing all of its twists and turns but body horror and gore fans will have a ball with this. It is a bloody, gory, extreme, violent, and funny beast of a film that was also the craziest film to play at MIFF this year. Best of all though, “The Substance” is so damned entertaining, my cinema lapped up every minute of it!
4 Stars.
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