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Substance Review: 50-year-old Elisabeth Sparkle’s skin and sinews are convincingly portrayed by sexagenarian Demi Moore.
Even in what might seem to be a female-dominated environment, such as a television morning exercise programme, a man—and a particularly toxic one at that—makes the decisions. When the well-liked host of the show is fired by her male boss on her fiftieth birthday without even offering her a by-your-leave, what does she do? She rebels. Hell is the price to be paid.
Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore, as we have never seen her before) receives the bad news from Harvey (Dennis Quaid), the head of the TV network, as she finishes a bowlful of prawns. Quaid does everything in his power to make the character an unrestrained, disgusting caricature.
It is almost annoying how contemptuous the man is of a past-her-prime celebrity—”This’s network TV, not charity,” he jokes. His curt, half-hearted thank-you note ends with “you were amazing,” the emphasis being on WERE.
Within hours, Elisabeth Sparkle, whose star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame has been trampled underfoot, is reduced to a historical artefact. When Harvey says, “Renewal is inevitable,” “But it stops at 50.” The network is looking to be renewed.
Elisabeth, too, is determined not to be left out of whatever the hell Harvey means by regeneration. She gives it a shot. Literally. She purchases a seductive but risky cell-replicating potion from a lab that claims to be able to help her create “a better, younger, and more perfect” version of herself as the world falls apart around her.
However, as she and the movie’s viewers soon discover, that desperate attempt to reverse the passage of time comes at a high cost.
The gloomy feminist parable, which is currently available to stream in India on MUBI, is filled with a riot of different hues, such as white and grey, which symbolise Elisabeth’s waning fame.
The Substance’s brutal critique of show business, in which women are forced to conform to unattainable ideals of beauty and marketability by decision-makers who only care about their noses and their bottom lines, is both terrifying and thrilling.
Elisabeth Sparkle’s submission to the process sets off a chaotic series of events that culminate in a conflict between her and Sue (Margaret Qualley), her enhanced Other Self. The flawless skin of her alter ego replaces her periorbital dark circles and the faint lines of wrinkles on her face that are frighteningly enlarged in the mirror.
For her, her “other self,” the “substance” is a one-way street to disaster, brought on by the grey-market drug and the television network that, after years of riding the popularity of her show, no longer needs her.
The Substance, written, co-produced, and directed by Coralie Fargeat, is a potent parable that does not hold back. It blends the pulpy with the polemical, the sharply pointed with the fiercely pugnacious.
The film lacks subtlety, which is to be expected from a body-horror adventure that aims to dismantle the genre and recast it in a new but frightening way.
The Substance absolutely erupts through the gates of a vile domain guarded by narrow-minded, insensitive men intoxicated by power, like a renegade excavator out to level everything in its path.
The film pushes the boundaries of the established skewed gender dynamics while simultaneously serving up an ambitious idea on a raw platter that was meticulously and imaginatively designed. Sound effects and visual sleights heighten the horror.
Although there are many scenes in The Substance that could make squeamish people uneasy, such as bodies being punctured with needles, flesh being pierced with bare hands and fingers, and human entrails crawling out of stomachs, the movie is not interested in jump scares.
The ludicrous commercial principles that propel the entertainment industry and the unbalanced ecosystem it creates are the source of the shocks that The Substance delivers.
Between Elisabeth and Sue, as well as between the two—a disembodied voice keeps reminding them that there is no she and I, you are one—and the network that the younger woman enters as Elisabeth’s stand-in, a crazy and ridiculous game takes place.
Unaware of everything that has happened since he fired her, Harvey presents Elisabeth—who is no longer the woman who had all of Los Angeles in her thrall—to “the shareholders,” all of whom are greying White men, in a rather innocuous passage that sets up a strange, boundary-pushing climax.
That brief scene conveys just as much as the numerous, far more dramatic, violent, and gory scenes. The way that The Substance is filmed maintains the feeling of a bubble that is just a prick away from popping.
Elisabeth is a creature in a fishbowl under the harsh spotlight of a world where women are treated like commodities and forced to dance to the music of their puppet-masters.
The casting is audacious and helpful. Demi Moore, a sexagenarian, fits 50-year-old Elisabeth Sparkle’s skin and sinews quite well. Margaret Qualley, who is actually exactly half Moore’s age, plays Sue flawlessly.
Demi Moore portrays Elisabeth as a woman who enters a bizarre underground world through a vertical trap door. The more she tries to regain control of her life, the further she falls into an endless abyss.
The actor puts her body—all of it and then some—and soul into the performance as she is reduced to a mere number and succumbs to a barely tested procedure that can only be stopped but not reversed.
Even as she enters a world where everything is utterly and fancifully out of place, Moore’s Elisabeth is situated in the hyper-real. Playing the ideal counterpoint, Margaret Qualley dominates the action in the same way that Elisabeth is overshadowed by the character’s arrival.
Fargeat’s incisive writing is just one aspect of The Substance, which took home the Best Screenplay Award at the 77th Cannes Film Festival this year.
The film benefits greatly from the work of Benjamin Kracun’s cinematography, editing (by Fargeat, Jerome Eltabet, and Valentin Feron), Perre-Olivier Persin’s makeup effects, and Raffertie’s music.
The Substance ends in a way that even David Cronenberg might not have, which is both revolting and captivating. The incredibly creative and ostentatious fable is both incredibly entertaining and incredibly sobering.
- Cast:
- Edward Hamilton-Clark, Dennis Quaid, Margaret Qualley, and Demi Moore
- Director:
- Coralie Fargeat