The sublime revenge of Coralie Fargeat

The Substance by Coralie Fargeat is sure to rank high in the cinema charts this year. Not only did the film cause a sensation at the last Cannes Film Festival, where it was in competition and won the Best Screenplay Award, but it also marks the return of 1990s star Demi Moore in one of the best roles of her career.

This is only the second feature film by French director Coralie Fargeat, after the acclaimed Revenge in 2017, which offered a new vision in this strange cinematic niche that is “rape and revenge”, while The Substance belongs to the “body horror” which does not fear blood and viscera, as in the films of Cronenberg and Ducournau.

Isn’t this success at Cannes a bit of a sweet “revenge”, in the middle of #metoo in France, for a director who loves genre cinema and didn’t have it easy when trying to make her films? “I see it more as an achievement, a full incarnation of who I am”, replies the friendly filmmaker, whom I reached by phone, while she was at the Toronto International Film Festival, with a laugh.

“It was such a joy to be selected at Cannes, to see that the film resonated, to have this recognition. I was in my place and, indeed, the road to get there is long and difficult, you have to face a lot of rejection, a bit like in the film. This feeling of being in the place where you belong is the most beautiful gift. It’s such a positive revenge, let’s say.”

Inspiring crisis

We hear people lamenting the fact that famous men are being “cancelled” for sexual misconduct, but these people tend to forget that there are more women who disappear from the public eye without having committed any crime, except that of growing old (or reporting an assault).

In The SubstanceElisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore), who hosts an aerobics show after getting her star on a celebrity boulevard for her film career, is shown the door by Harvey (oh well), her producer (Dennis Quaid), who thinks she’s too old. According to him, it’s normal in this business that it stops at 50 for a woman.

Coralie Fargeat drew on her own fears to write her script. It was an encounter between her desire to continue making films as she wanted and what she was experiencing personally: a panic as she approached her fiftieth birthday.

She also realized that these themes had been with her since childhood, and how “our sense of self-worth can be shaped by the importance we place on the gaze of others, because we have to respond to injunctions that make us think that if we are not perfect, we are worthless.”

What dominates us

In the film, Elizabeth, shocked by her dismissal, is offered a mysterious substance that can create a double of herself named Sue (Margaret Qualley) – younger, more beautiful, more all – with whom she will have to share her existence every other week. When one is alive, the other is in a kind of coma, and vice versa. But they are one, and if the rules of the substance are not respected, the experiment will go wrong. You have no idea how bad it will be.

I expected a little more solidarity between Elisabeth and Sue, but that’s not what happens. According to the director, Sue represents this little internal voice that criticizes us all the time. “She is the externalization and the incarnation of this internal fight. How threatened we can feel by everything that is going to fall apart in our physique. Elisabeth represents for Sue all the danger of what is going to exceed, that is going to be old, and that creates a phenomenon of rejection.”

I also expected a full-on attack on ageism and patriarchy, and there is one, but that’s not the real issue. The Substance is a terrible critique and illustration of women’s internalized self-hatred.

I came away from this film feeling like I had undergone a brutal psychoanalysis, and I loved it.

“This internalized violence is created by society and its way of functioning, which, in my opinion, has been very misogynistic and still is to a large extent,” notes Fargeat. “I show the consequences of that.”

The future belongs to us

Who decided that after 50, it’s over for women, when, according to statistics, they live longer than men?

Worse: why do so many women spend their lives fearing this deadline or end up believing in it?

“I think it’s linked to a patriarchal social system where the value of women is based on their fertility, on being young and beautiful and giving birth,” summarizes Coralie Fargeat. “We are in a utilitarian process where women are at the service of male desire. From the middle of our life, practically, we are told that you are no longer useful.”

I made Coralie Fargeat laugh with my enthusiasm and my indignation. What made me angry in The Substance was to see on screen how a woman prevents herself from living her life, too obsessed by the gaze of others, who do not even see the human being in her.

“That’s exactly it,” says the director. “This vicious circle, which is an extremely powerful instrument of domination. It prevents us from taking our place fully.”

That Demi Moore, whose every look and operation has been scrutinized in magazines since her debut, accepted such a role surprised me at first, but reassures me about Coralie Fargeat’s power of persuasion. They discussed the true nature of the film at length, and decided together that we had to go 100% to make her vision succeed, regardless of external expectations. Demi Moore, like Coralie Fargeat, was ready to go all the way.

This role and this film, the director believes, came at a time in their lives when they wanted to free themselves from a prison. “Demi’s personal journey gave her the strength to play this role and to show herself vulnerable,” she believes. “I think it takes a lot of strength to show your vulnerability on screen without putting yourself in danger and, on the contrary, to create something that will nourish us. We were both in a phase where we needed to get out of something. And yes, a little bit of taking revenge on our destiny. We have our place, we want our place, we are going to create our place, and we are going to be proud because we have the right to be there, for a long time to come. The success of the film is the greatest reward. And for her, and for me.”

I make Coralie Fargeat laugh one last time by predicting a very nice fifty years for her, since she is a revelation at only 48 years old.

The Substance is released in theaters on September 20.