Coralie Fargeat had been pretty quiet after the success of her acclaimed debut feature Revenge. Her only credit since Revenge got a wide release in the winter/spring of 2018 is directing an episode of the Netflix fantasy drama series The Sandman in 2022. Almost 7 years to the day after Revenge debuted at the Toronto Film Festival, Fargeat has come roaring back to cinema with The Substance-a film that is miles more audacious, assured and compelling than Revenge.
What Fargeat is setting out to do with The Substance is pretty clear from the jump: She's taking a darkly satirical look at female beauty standards and aging through the inspired vessel of a hardcore body horror movie. At the start of the film, the audience is introduced to Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore)-a celebrity fitness instructor/former actor with a popular TV show on a major network. On the morning of her 50th birthday, she's abruptly fired by the head of the network (Dennis Quaid) due to their desires to replace her with someone 20+ years younger. After getting into a car accident on the drive home immediately after her firing that leaves her briefly hospitalized, Sparkle gets introduced to a black-market drug called "The Substance". What "The Substance" does is generate a "younger, more beautiful version" of the host from their own cells. There's only a couple of rules: The two parties are required to switch places every 7 days and the party that's "living" has to stabilize the unconscious one by injecting them with a serum every day to ensure that no harm is done to their body. After initially refusing The Substance, she agrees to take it. Upon starting the process, Elisabeth gives birth to "Sue" (Margret Qualley). In a matter of days, Sue has taken Elisabeth's old job and within months of her show's premiere, has become a bigger star than Elisabeth ever was. As Sue begins to have a harder time accepting the balance The Substance requires to work, she realizes that a refusal to abide by the drug's careful instructions has horrifying consequences.
The beauty (no pun intended) of The Substance is the excesses of its over-the-top grotesquery (gory, sexual and otherwise) are all in service of its story. Sparkle is made to feel like she's lost her worth as a person on account of her age, so she elects to go to great lengths to change her appearance in order to "preserve" her sense of self. Deep down she knows that she's hurting herself, but the attention she's receiving from others and how these changes combat the insecurity she has about her body and aging makes it all worthwhile... until the whole facade crumbles in a horrific fashion.
While making the protagonist a celebrity that serves the heightened nature of the film could erase the relatability factor for some viewers, I was very impressed with Fargeat's ability to unleash an equally angry, sad and silly attack against the unwanted attention women receive over their appearance and how it effects their ability to navigate the world. All of the massive industries (plastic surgery, weight loss supplements, etc.) out there that primarily exist to aid women in changing their appearance wouldn't exist without the feelings of insecurity and inadequacy that stem from the pressure society places on women to not age naturally. Much has been made about how unsubtle Fargeat is with her messaging here, but I don't think a genre movie takedown of the whole concept of beauty standards and the culture that breeds them would work if it didn't lean into the obscenity and absurdity that serve as key drivers for this rotten fucking ecosystem.
As sharp as The Substance is from a storytelling standpoint, Fargeat's leading trio of actors is what really allows this film's absurd/angry/tragic tonal balancing act to really come together so seamlessly. Moore turns in her best performance of this century, if not her entire career as Elisabeth Sparkle. The extremes of Elisabeth's transformation throughout the film hit with staggering force simply because of how sad, funny and fearless she is at depicting a woman who doesn't know what to do with herself when the industry tells her she's too old to be considered beautiful and should probably just go die quietly in a cave somewhere. Watching Moore knock this part out of the park makes me wonder why nobody has bothered to give her any role that had real weight behind it in 20+ years. This is the work of a masterful actor that has what it takes to be viewed as one of the best in the business if somebody just gave her the right opportunities. Hopefully this is just the start of the Mooreaissance and she won't immediately have to go back to appearing in stuff like Songbird once this press cycle dies down.
Qualley's turn as Sue is every bit as forceful and impressive as Moore's. Watching Sue literally drain the life out of herself in order to preserve her renewed stardom is brutally heartbreaking and the increasing sense of desperation that Qualley imbues the character with provides a bridge to the explosive, disgusting powerhouse finale that really solidifies the film's excellence. Her knack for picking interesting roles remains among the best in all of Hollywood right now and with her next string of projects being from Ethan Coen, John Patton Ford and Richard Linklater, that doesn't appear to be in danger of changing in the near future.
Perhaps the biggest, pleasant surprise here is Quaid. He's spent so much time lately making D-grade Christian movies and C-grade thrillers that it's easy to forget just how good of an actor he can be when he is handed the right material. His handful of scenes here as the head of the network Elisabeth/Sue work at are among the best whole in the film. Quaid's expertly calculated shameless overacting makes this guy the most repulsive misogynistic buffoon on the planet and it's a blast to laugh at and be disgusted by this cartoonish prick every time he shows up. In a perfect world, he would be nominated for an Oscar and a snippet of the bathroom scene that serves as the introduction to this character would play on ABC airwaves.
As general audiences finally start to see the bulk of this year's buzziest film festival titles over the next few months, I doubt too many will deliver the goods in the way that The Substance does. Uncompromising works of art that not only take pride in taking big swings but have the artistic vision and confidence behind them to get them right are a rare breed in this era where films are regualarly too risk-averse for their own good. Fargeat is a special cinematic voice that we're lucky to have and may The Substance open up any door in Hollywood that she desires to walk through.
Grade: A-
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