Do you have a deep, all encompassing hatred for humanity and human nature? Has your pathological hatred of men somehow manoeuvred you into hating women too? Are your finest reserves of hatred reserved for yourself? Or are you just a shallow Hollywood leech looking for an opinion to parrot? Either way, 2024's The Substance is the movie for you.
Demi Moore plays Elisabeth Sparkle, a Hollywood star who's finding opportunities waning as she hits 50. I didn't like this movie but it's not Demi Moore's fault. She gives a brave, no holds barred performance and a lot of reviews miss the fact that she is actually 62 years old, playing 50. I suspect the age of fifty was chosen because it was Gloria Swanson's age when she made Sunset Boulevard. Sunset Boulevard, by the way, is just one of the many works of fiction that did a much better job tackling this same subject matter.
Elisabeth is surreptitiously contacted by someone who suggests she'd be perfect for "The Substance". This stuff, which glows bright green in a syringe like in the film version of Re-Animator (not a coincidence, I think), allows her to transform into a beautiful young woman. The catch is that she has to switch back every seven days. Also, the stuff splits her into two different bodies so while she's out gallivanting as one, the other is comatose on the bathroom floor. For some reason she never thinks to put the inactive body in a bed. Apart from all the extreme body horror that happens in this movie, I'd have thought she'd been waking up with severe muscle cramps.
The younger version of her is played by Margaret Qualley, one of the Manson girls from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, nearly all of whom seem to be showing up in lead roles now. She was a stand out for me in that and she's good here, too. There's a lot of nudity in this over-long movie--a good chunk of time is spent with the women writhing around nude in the bathroom, sometimes horrifically, sometimes prettily, as director Coralie Fargeat consciously indulges in what's lazily termed "the male gaze" (I've already written at length about my problems with the term). One aspect of the term's inadequacy is obvious from the fact that this female director is getting her rocks off photographing Qualley and Moore to a point that goes well beyond irony--and, yes, I know the argument is that this would be "internalised misogyny", but sooner or later in this theoretical hall of mirrors you have to hit the brick wall of honest human compulsion.
One of the more interesting aspects of the film is that Elisabeth and Sue, the name she adopts when in Qualley form, have trouble remembering that they are one person. It's a nice way of showing how someone can avoid taking responsibility for their own actions and addictions.
But Elisabeth/Sue is so shallow, so without any dimension, all the characters are, that there's no tension. There's no sense of professional or artistic pride in creation, in fact the film almost seems to be an attack on the very idea of creativity because the best Elisabeth/Sue can make are cheesy workout videos. How odd this auteur movie would be so dismissive of the idea that there's any intrinsically redemptive value in art. That's one reason Sunset Boulevard is a better film. That's one reason The Picture of Dorian Gray is a better story. Dorian Gray may be the best comparison. Elisabeth effectively becomes the painting rotting in the attic while Sue indulges in all the pleasures of youth. But Oscar Wilde saw value in beauty and the book is a more complex discussion of the relationship between beauty, ethics, and empathy.
Maybe the title of the film is meant to have a double meaning, in that this is a story of people whose lives have no substance. But ironically, it's the film itself that lacks substance. I was already getting impatient with the two and a half hour movie when it suddenly used a bit of Bernard Herrmann's Vertigo score. It reminded me of when Kim Novak got pissed off when--what was that forgotten Oscar darling?--The Artist used the Vertigo score. I don't know how she feels about The Substance but I'm certainly annoyed on her behalf. It's played over a scene in which Sue, now in an impressive body horror prosthetic suit, sits in front of a mirror putting on earrings in a grotesque parody. I would guess Fargeat subscribes to the shallowest, commonest feminist reading of Vertigo, a movie which approaches the same ideas of beauty and idealism in ways more complex and interesting than The Substance can ever dream of. Elisabeth/Sue's final form strikingly resembles Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man, which I don't think was intentional but brings home just how misguided this film is.
Ultimately, and particularly because of its excessive run time, this film feels like a holy punishment, like the fever dream of the most bible black Puritan preacher, unleashing his fury on the whores of Babylon and impious men. In fact, I was reminded of "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God", the 1741 sermon by Reverend Jonathan Edwards. The Substance is entirely populated by damned souls who have no conception of a reality beyond the glitter that attracts them and the flames that consume them.
The Substance is available on MUBI in the U.S.
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