A super-dark satire of Hollywood and a touching teen coming of age tale share an unlikely plot point.
The Substance is an audacious, combative, very feminist film with not the least bit of squeamishness about nudity, violence, or bodily grotesquerie. It is not subtle, at least, and it comes right out and says what it wants to say. In it, French director Coralie Fargeat emerges as a major new voice.
The filmmaker is French, and The Substance was filmed entirely in France, approximating Hollywood. It’s just a little bit off, which, if anything, adds to the effectiveness. It’s a wacky, skewed version of Hollywood in the sense that “super-sexy aerobics show” and “New Year’s Eve special in the form of a Vegas revue, complete with topless showgirls” aren’t exactly things that exist in real-life network television.
The film also features some of the most disturbing body horror outside of a Cronenberg film.
The plot of The Substance is a “Picture of Dorian Gray” riff, featuring a former star actress contending that Hollywood no longer needs someone like her.
Demi Moore stars as Elisabeth Sparkle, a movie star of the past who now stars on an exercise-based network TV show, which resembles the popular workout videos Jane Fonda did in the ‘80s, also after her original run as a movie star mainly had wrapped up.
On the outs at her TV show, Elisabeth accepts an offer from a shadowy company to accept a futuristic drug called “The Substance.” Doing so will allow her to be replaced, in seven-day increments, by Sue, a younger, sexier version of herself (Margaret Qualley, trading bodies with her mother’s St. Elmo’s Fire costar.)
I won’t give away the process of how this is done except to say that it involves gross, unnatural things being done to bodies. And of course, the bargain doesn’t turn out the way it’s supposed to, and if you thought the gross body horror stuff at the beginning was bad, that was nothing. I especially admired the wild, go-for-broke ending.
The Sue version of Elisabeth takes over her old job on the TV show, makes it way sexier, and becomes a major star, within a system that very much values those things.
Pretty much all of the men in the movie are various degrees of grotesque, with Dennis Quaid as the most repulsive of all, a disgusting, unhygienic TV producer. It’s his best performance in years and leaves his recent turn as Ronald Reagan in the dust. And in keeping with the film’s unapologetic on-the-noseness, Quaid’s lecherous producer is named “Harvey.”)
The style is top-notch; this is one of the year’s best-looking motion pictures. And it’s also one of those films where, going into the third act, we know that just about anything is possible. What it actually comes up with doesn’t disappoint.
Demi Moore gives her best performance in years, as someone with first-hand knowledge of how Hollywood knocks around actresses. Not that Hollywood was especially nice to Demi Moore even when she was young, as she laid out both in her memoir and her appearance earlier this year in the Brats documentary.
Moore was a frequent subject of the most recent “Erotic ‘90s” season of Karina Longworth’s invaluable You Must Remember This podcast. Like a lot of actresses in that decade, a lot of male critics quote pieces back then that amounted to “Demi Moore did something sexy in that movie or on that magazine over. Shame, shame on her!”
There’s little explanation of who is behind The Substance or their motivations. I also know there will be some very annoying discourse about this one. By the end of awards season, I promise, someone WILL write a bad thinkpiece comparing The Substance to Ozempic.
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As for the other film this week about a woman confronting a version of herself at a different age, I give you My Old Ass, a Sundance premiere from January that lands in theaters this week. It’s a lovely and very affecting drama, even if the title makes it sound like a cheeky comedy (My Old Ass and The Substance could also have traded titles and both had them make sense.)
Directed by Megan Park, and filmed gorgeously in rural Ontario, the film centers on Elliott (Maisy Stella), a young woman set to head off to college who, on one very stoned note, is visited by the 39-year-old version of herself (Aubrey Plaza).
They have some very funny banter, but we soon realize the older Elliott has appeared for one reason: To warn her younger self against falling in love with Chad (Percy Hynes White), who she’s about to meet.
Why is she warning her? Is Chad going to break her heart? Or do something worse? Or some other reason entirely? Much of the movie’s tension is figuring out exactly which shoe will end up dropping.
Stella, a former child star who has spent the recent part of her career as a singer, is a revelation in the lead role. She has much more screen time than Plaza, who performs another fantastic indie movie role.
However, there’s one choice here that makes very little sense: The film establishes at the beginning that Elliott identifies as a lesbian, has only dated women, is in a casual relationship with a woman currently. But then she falls in love with a man, who the film seems to agree will become the love of her life.
Why is this plot point there? If she had dated boys previously before meeting Chad, or, for that matter, if everything else about the plot was the same except the Chad character was a woman, the movie would make more sense. As it stands now, it’s as if the film is arguing for curing homosexuality or something. It’s the argument people made about Chasing Amy back in the ‘90s, which in that case made me think they hadn’t stayed to watch the third act.
I was very taken by this movie; I started watching the screener late at night, thinking I’d just watch the first half hour and then watch the rest the next day, but I couldn’t turn away. tt
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