It's worth it, go for it, I say. You'll only
regret it for a while
dir: Coralie Fargeat
2024
What a year of wonders 2024 is turning out to be. I’m not even talking about all the insanity outside of the world of cinema. Now is not the time for that conversation.
No, I’m just talking about within the realm of films. This here film The Substance has to be about the most bonkers thing I’ve seen in a good long while, yet it also manages to be one of the funniest films of the year. Solely from a filmmaking point of view, it’s an incredibly well put together, intricately constructed, horrifically grotesque and sickening movie. There are incredible scenes, immaculate shots piled on top of each other, with no concern, with no regard for our well being whatsoever.
Of course the focus will be on the flick’s purported all caps blankly stated feminist statements, but the flick is too subversive, too ambitious to be confined by such simplicity. And, honestly, this might sound like a deliberately ignorant thing to say, but beyond the assertion of certain ideas, the film is more interested in pushing the possible or the acceptable than it is in underlining its points.
This is a bit of a genre straddling colossus, because it doesn’t neatly fit into either the science fiction or the horror genres, though its premise is entirely dependent on a heavy sci fi concept, and it is monstrously horrific in its visual (and auditory) depictions. It has a level of set design that would have made the set designers and art directors that worked with Stanley Kubrick green with envy (and possibly litigious for having lifted so many of their designs). There are other elements that mirror the precise striking visuals of make-up and perfume commercials, aligned with an aesthetic that seems like it’s channelling a runway catwalk in Berlin during fashion week.
And then there’s the sound design. Watching a gross older man devouring prawns is one thing, but what if you get to hear it in such a way that scars your soul? What if the sound cues throughout the flick effectively demand your attention, and sometimes feel like a punch in the head, just for good measure?
And what is it all in the service of? That society shames women for aging AND punishes them for the steps they take to try and remain youthful looking and desirable, and therefore valuable in a marketplace that only sees them as an object to be sold like any other?
Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) is a star, or at least was a star. We see her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame being constructed and set into the footpath at the height of her fame. But then time passes, and the star itself becomes weathered, cracked and neglected.
Improbably, Elisabeth is a star currently because of a TV aerobics program. I say improbably because the flick is set contemporarily, and not the 1980s. So we know immediately that this isn’t set in the contemporary, “real” world. No one, man, woman or everything in between is a ‘star’ today because of an aerobics show, no matter how young, old, hot or not. The internet therefore barely even factors into this flick, despite the prevalence of smartphones.
Yet because she’s reached the magical age of 50, the head of the channel unceremoniously fires her on her birthday. He is filmed in close up, with a distorting, fish-eye lens, powering through a plate of shrimp in the most hideous manner imaginable. “He” is Harvey (Dennis Quaid), and I doubt it’s a coincidence that he’s named after Weinstein. Everything he does, whether eating, pissing or talking is meant to fill us with disgust, and oh boy it so does.
It’s all a bit too much. And on her birthday, no less. And then she has a car accident, which adds injury to insult. During a hospital check-up, a very youthful and creepy jerk is evaluating her not for physical trauma from the accident, but for her suitability for something exciting and new.
It’s for The Substance. She could, if she so chooses, get a new lease on life if she (probably, it’s never clarified how much) pays a fortune and undergoes a horrific self-inflicted procedure that will create a younger, hotter version of herself that will render her existence a symbiotic and incredibly delicate and intensive hell.
Now, of course we’re meant to be thinking that this is all a bit too much, so why would someone inflict such a torment upon themselves, suspecting full well that things will not turn out “all right”? Well, would we ever have stories that are cautionary tales otherwise?
Of course she must fear that something could go wrong, but she couldn’t imagine, just like I couldn’t, just how fucking wrong things will go.
Yes, this is clearly science fiction, in that (thankfully) something like this doesn’t currently exist, but it’s not treated like a convenience or an easy story conceit / cheat. It’s really a very complicated and very constraining set up, one so difficult as to point to just how desperate its adherents might be.
When she signs up for the service, she becomes a number, and each time she calls the “help” number connected to “The Substance”, the hostile voice on the other end never cares what the problem is, and doesn’t even respond until she gives over her number, being 503. She has to physically walk to a dodgy end of town in order to get her package and its refills, in a room so over-designed it looks like it’s letterboxes from some Kubrickian nightmare.
The process, which is only ever meant to be done once, is horrific and doesn’t really make any earth-level sense, but if we were going to adhere to that, there’d be no film. After injecting herself (which only happens after Elizabeth glares at herself, and her body in the mirror for veritable ages, with a deep, deep level of self-hatred), something, someone bursts forth out of her back.
She literally gives birth to a younger version of herself. That younger being eventually calls herself Sue (Margaret Qualley), but her first job (other than to enjoy the sight and feel of her youthful skin), is to sew up the split in Elisabeth’s back along her spine. That seems like…hard work, and we’re privy to every moment of the bodkin pressing through skin (the effects work, mostly physical / practical effects, is phenomenal and of course sickening) until the job is done.
From the start, they know the rules that need to be strictly adhered to, but almost from the start both start flaunting them. They are told, repeatedly “You Are One”, as in, their self-interest and survival is dependent entirely on each other, but when one is awake or at least ambulant for seven days, the other is in a coma for that time, being intravenously fed this horrid supplement. Sue also has to extract a stabilising fluid from Elisabeth’s back, but she’s only meant to do it seven days in a row. They don’t share consciousness, in fact other than through the set up they are completely separate beings.
With their own separate hopes and dreams, and appetites, and anger.
Sue in some strange way gets revenge for Elisabeth being fired by being cast as her own replacement, because when the casting jerks and Harvey eventually see her, they can barely contain themselves or not cream their jeans. Sue represents everything that they want, that they could aspire to, that anyone should aspire to, but presented solely in the most plastic – aerobic – mannequinish manner you could imagine. The eventual show she does is raunch made rubbery flesh, with the camera isolating and sexualising every part and movement, but in a way so asexual it’s like watching Barbie dolls go through their deranged paces by a possibly depraved controller.
The show is a massive hit, but the person that’s the most unhappy about it, is of course, Elisabeth. When she is awake, and looks at a world in which she (and most importantly, her image) has been replaced with that of Sue, it mostly makes her angry but also very passive. A chap she might have gone to high school with way back in the day asks her out, and it’s about the only positive thing she contemplates doing, something that’s active, like, her actually doing something.
But, that’s not how events transpire. In a film filled to the brim with great scenes, or at least many arresting scenes of eyeball scorching intensity, the scene where Elisabeth tries to apply makeup and make some peace with who she is and how she looks now before that date, is absolutely the most powerful scene in the whole film, no question.
Elisabeth and Sue are locked in a hateful battle with each other, each trying to steal some life from the other, or make things harder / worse for the other even if it harms them too, because, thanks, patriarchy, and a society that condemns women to secondary status with unachievable beauty standards that keeps them too busy and too isolated to band together, rise up and kill all the Harveys and white old male shareholders of this world. There is no intersectionality, no sisterhood, no solidarity – they must fight and tear away at each other for the amusement of the men at the top.
And not even just for the men at the top of the heap who benefit personally and financially from all this – it’s also for the amusement and to maintain the privilege of the vast quantities of male mediocrities in the middle.
Double standards, triple standards, the hypocrisy level hardly matters.
I wasn’t sure if I imagined this, or if it was just a different camera angle, but the ever dwindling number of numbered boxes for the clients taking The Substance made me think, well, we’re all here for a good time, not a long time, and in this (current) world where people are injecting all sorts of shit into themselves to look younger and thinner, I imagine many would explicitly take a devil’s bargain of looking hotter and thinner for a while even if it took twenty years off of your lifespan.
That’s where we are, as a species. Obsessed with the dumbest, most pointless stuff, like not what’s going on in our hearts (or in Palestine), but whether this new wrinkle we just found is as visible as we fear, or whether we’ve lost another centimetre of hair line, or how to get rid of that stubborn last 30 extra kilos (despite not exercising or eating well at all).
The last section of the flick, in a film that was already pretty long, will probably go too far for too many people. It stretches out into actual creature feature / monstrously absurd territory (as well as brutal violence), and, I have to say, I was entirely here for it. The filmmakers wanted to take this to its illogical extreme, and they took it there, in ways both hideous and hilarious, but that’s only for me. I can’t say that other people will get what I got from the end of this goddamn movie, because it’s really too much.
It is in many ways the only way the flick could end. Yes, it’s absurd, yes it makes less sense even that what preceded it, yes it’s beyond bonkers. But it’s perfect. The last images, astounding / idiotic as they are, insane as they are, are so perfect that I almost forgive this film everything that it maybe gets wrong or indulges in too much of along the way.
The effects work, I just have to say again, is magnificently terrifying. I’m so glad they did as much of what they did with practical effects. It’s one thing to say that a flick has strong elements and themes of body horror, and it’s another to just have so much astounding and stomach-churning work that would make the likes of practical effects maestros like Stan Winston, Rick Baker, Rob Bottin and John Naulin cheer, well, at least the ones mentioned who are still alive. The others will continue being dead, but they won’t spin in their graves at least.
I think it’s a mistake to talk about this flick as inspired by cautionary tales of the past like Death Becomes Her, or The Picture of Dorian Gray or other films or stories where someone does something without thinking about it enough and it turns out bad for them, and it’s far more complex and enjoyable than, say, the average episode of Black Mirror which tells the audience technology is bad and you should feel bad for using it. It was a delightful and disgusting feast for the eyes and ears. Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley do phenomenal work, but for my money Demi Moore has finally done the role of her life. She should get nominated for it, as a reward for her “bravery”, but it really is a phenomenal performance, however much latex she’s wearing in a given scene. Qualley does fine too, but honestly she’s been in too many films that I’ve seen in the last year. She needs to take a break occasionally.
The Substance. Good for what ails ya, and then someone kills you for your troubles
9 times this is the best David Lynch film I’ve seen that he had absolutely no hand in directing or any involvement in whatsoever out of 10
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“ You will not be disappointed. She's my most beautiful creation. I have shaped her for success.” – nothing succeeds like success - The Substance
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