French filmmaker Coralie Fargeat was revealed in 2017 thanks to Revengemovie gore feminist that ended in a bloodbath. Let’s say it right away, for sensitive souls who want to abstain, The Substance is at Revenge what a swimming pool is to a paddling pool…
With its multiple references to the cinema of the 1970s and 1980s, yellow has The Elephant Manpassing by Carrie And The Shining, The Substance is a delightful, subversive and transgressive science fiction horror thriller. A work of body horror which David Cronenberg would certainly not have denied Scanners, The Fly And Videodrome.
Thanks to futuristic technology, Elizabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) is promised an exceptional youth cure. A particularly macho producer, Harvey (Dennis Quaid), has just made this Oscar-winning actress, recycled for decades in morning fitness television, understand that she has passed her “expiration date” at fifty.
No surgical procedure can hide her age, so she turns to Substance, a revolutionary formula available on the black market, which allows, through cell division, the generation of another version of oneself, “younger, more beautiful, more perfect”, on condition that she shares her time with her alter ego, one week at a time (while one lives, the other sleeps, in short).
Elizabeth splits into Sue (Margaret Qualley), an extremely energetic and ambitious young woman. “You are only one,” the mysterious creators of the Substance remind Elizabeth. But what happens if her double doesn’t play by the rules?
Feminist pamphlet
Best Screenplay Award at the most recent Cannes Film Festival, The Substancewhich keeps you on the edge of your seat with its frantic pace, is much more than a bloody film that sometimes makes you look away from the screen (there are injections of liquids and purulent bodies). It is a reflection on aging and youth, vanity and the need for love, all-consuming ambition and the part of yourself that you don’t like.
STILL FROM THE FILM
The Substance
It is also a denunciation of the beauty dictates of Western patriarchal societies, internalized by many women for decades. A feminist pamphlet, anything but didactic, against the injunction made to women to be desirable, according to criteria imposed by men.
Demi Moore finds her most interesting role in a long time in this self-referential character, which certainly required a lot of humility and a good dose of courage from her (she is filmed from every angle, then unreservedly made ugly). The 1990s star, who has been little seen recently, plays disarray and disenchantment in an absolutely convincing way.
Coralie Fargeat’s direction is certainly not lacking in style, with its subjective camera and saturated colors. As in her first feature film, the 48-year-old filmmaker films young women by hypersexualizing their bodies, in order to denounce the objectification they are subjected to in society.
The Substance also becomes more and more incredible and bloody over the course of its 2 hours 20 minutes, until a completely crazy finale. Some will love it, others will hate it. It’s impossible to remain indifferent.
Check the movie schedule
Horror
The Substance
Coralie Fargeat
With Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid
2:20