You’ll never be pleased to get a double yolked egg again.
The Substance overtly sets out to be a savage satirical indictment of our societal obsession with youth, beauty, and self-worth, wrapped up in a lurid, body-horror bonanza. It wants to inject itself under your skin like clostridium botulinum, equally likely to make you sick as freeze you in your seat, unable to close your eyes. It’s an explicit and exquisite expose of the public face and private price of beauty whose critique of the commoditization of women’s bodies is archly made metatextual by some of the critical reactions the film has received.
When wildly successful TV lifestyle and fitness guru Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) turns fifty she abruptly finds out that her value as perceived by the TV networks has been extinguished as surely as the still-warm candles on the birthday cake nobody thought to buy her. Distracted and depressed by the sudden turn of events, she’s involved in a car accident but a chance encounter in the hospital leads her to the ultimate prestige beauty subscription service: The Substance. Using the service allows Elisabeth to create a younger, better, more beautiful version of herself – quite literally shedding her old skin to reveal the new in the ultimate extreme exfoliation routine. As Sue (Margaret Qualley), she wastes no time in reclaiming her former status and fame and revelling in her new timeshare lease on life. But The Substance comes with more rules than owning a Mogwai and as time wears on, the détente between doppel-Jekyll and discarded Hyde starts to break down in the most grotesque way.
At the centre of The Substance is Demi Moore, who plays deposed idol Elisabeth Sparkle with a raw, honest intensity which helps ground the emotional core of the film and support the insanity to come. Moore’s performance has, more than once, been described as “brave”, an arch euphemism for having the temerity to strip completely naked on screen at the age of sixty-one and bare her slight physical imperfections all to see. The very fact this is perceived as requiring courage is one of the main reasons why a film like The Substance exists.
The premise is as delicious as it is disquieting—The Devil Wears Prada meets Frankenhooker by way of Possession—and for most of its too-long run time of two hours and twenty minutes, writer/ director Coralie Fargeat mines a rich seam of social commentary, emotional vulnerability and moments of incisive wit from her small but perfectly formed cast amidst the increasingly outré moments of body horror. The Substance is not a film for anyone who’s not keen on needles, for sure. It is, however, a film for anyone keen on copious amounts of female nudity although be aware, the film is watching you watching it and judging you for it.
Dennis Quaid, meanwhile, is right there with you eyeballing every fleshy moment, having the time of his life as Harvey, the sleazy TV executive, embodying every lascivious, predatory trope you’ve ever imagined in one comprehensively repulsive package. There’s a ballsy energy to Quaid’s performance that almost makes you wish the entire film had embraced its campy potential more fully. Certainly, The Substance has little time for such paltry concerns as logic and exposition. Beauty is above such things, of course, but such is the film’s laissez fair attitude towards exposition that it starts to feel like laziness. The science of The Substance itself is understandably shaky but perhaps that’s because it’s apparently free? It’s the ultimate subscription service, although it doesn’t offer home delivery, just click and collect.
The lack of details plays into the film’s bifurcated narrative as Elisabeth and Sue continue to live their same but separate lives even if the film often seems to rely on the idea that each personality doesn’t really remember their experiences as the other although if that is the case, what on Earth is the benefit for Elisabeth in the whole arrangement as Sue starts to consume her like some kind of gingerbread cottage in the woods or her very own portrait of Dorian Gray? Certainly, you’d think that any kind of recollection of how the other half lives would prompt at least a modicum of effort to keep your alt-reality comfortable and treat them with a little dignity during their down time?
But Oscar Wilde isn’t the only homage Fargeat accessorises her excoriating examination of modern beauty standards with. References to classic horror masters Davids and Cronenberg abound, alongside Stephen King and Alfred Hitchcock but its Stanley Kubrick and The Shining in particular which is most prominently and repeatedly embraced an aesthetic foundation upon which to contour, tone, plump and define Elisabeth and Sue’s self-destructive pas de deux.
There’s a point, around half an hour from the end, where The Substance could have concluded with a satisfyingly bleak and ambiguous endpoint but The Substance is about nothing if its not about indulgence – and self-destructive indulgence especially so the movie treats itself to a dose of its own medicine and, for want of a better phrase, absolutely shits the bed in an orgiastic excess of ludicrously over the top body horror, absurdist fantasy and guignol so grand, it achieves guignol excessif.
Throughout its runtime, The Substance walks a fine line between scary and silly but in its superfluous coda, it doesn’t just cross that line it obliterates it in a power washing of blood. Sure, it’s grotesque and almost morbidly fascinating but it all feels a little puerile and excessive. The climax is less cathartic than it is chaotic. Body horror is robbed of its horrific edge and what’s left is just fucking weird, but not in a good way. By the time the credits roll, I felt cheated by its descent into incomprehensible excess making everything that came before seem shallow and insubstantial.
