‘The Substance’ - Review
Coralie Fargeat’s second feature film The Substance, is a splattering festival of female suffering due to the world’s beauty standards, portrayed through unflinching and electrifying body horror. The film holds a streak of comedy, despair and horror in a tight braid, evoking an array of groans, squirming and surprised laughter from the audience in my theatre. Through bright and jarring sets, Fargeat throws us into a world of a Hollywood that is reminiscent of the 80s, but with the technology and awareness of today; a pastiche setting that is soaked in hate for itself for not catching up. Despite not having any experience with fame, the pressure these women are under to achieve beauty reaches a boiling point that I’ve felt before.
Demi Moore stars as Elisabeth, a superstar actress from yesteryear turned fitness idol, and has the impermanence of her beauty spat in her face by her boss played by Dennis Quaid, a character intended to be a sentient form of chauvinism. The downfall of her career is depicted at the start of the film, through a time-lapse of her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. We see it go from doted on and fawned after to unimportant, abandoned and forgotten by every splatter of food and rubbish that finds its way atop it. Moore gives a fearless and stunning performance as an actress that was previously known as a movie star who evoked a knowing excitement in the audience whenever she graced the screen. Through Elisabeth, Fargeat frames a desperation recognizable to countless women who were forced to tango with a world that provides them with this label of beauty that is too slippery to hold tight. Once Elisabeth finds out about “The Substance” through a USB stick snuck into her pocket by an almost-alien-like male nurse, she calls the number plastered onto the screen and pursues the procedure.
This is where the body horror manifests itself on screen. An unreal, gorgeous and smooth-skinned Margaret Qualley crawls her way out of Moore’s split spine. The imagery of the split Demi Moore giving birth to her new, improved and perfect self is deeply reminiscent of something out of a David Cronenberg film. Qualley’s character, Sue, is the amalgamation of the youth and assets Elisabeth so desperately yearns for. As Sue, Qualley provides her best and most relentless performance yet, reminiscent of the snake’s head in an ouroboros, whilst Moore is the poor tail being eaten alive. The procedure has one grave rule: regular switching between the two selves, on a weekly basis. Sue, of course, becomes outright intoxicated by the attention her perfection brings her, as the camera lingers over every part of her body like a video game character before combat. She is not interested in letting go, even for the mandatory one-week switch.
The film constantly pushes the idea that they are one – two halves of the same existence – even though for every joy experienced by Sue’s time in the limelight, Elisabeth suffers endlessly. Both sides are destroying the sanctuary of self. The version that is wasting away and the version that is on a pedestal, both exist in the cacophony of womanhood, squished under the thumb of expected and defining good looks and the temporary love that comes with it. Despite the brilliantly displayed extremity of the story, I couldn’t help but put myself in the role of Elisabeth specifically. I wonder how long it will be, until I am recycled by a world that constantly gives and takes the badge of beauty away from me, or if it has happened already, and I hadn’t noticed at all.
Change of the self and my relationship with the body I find myself in, has always been a part of my existence. I was born with a haemangioma on my eyelid – a vascular tumour that started out small, but kept on growing and needed to be removed by the time I was nine weeks old. I underwent a laser treatment, which saved my eye, but left me with a lifelong scar that became less intense as I grew up. When I think about this portion of my early life, I’m mostly overwhelmed with feelings of sympathy for my young parents. Currently, as an adult woman, I remain conscious about symmetry and the beauty, or lack thereof, of my face. I have a lazy eye and a scar on the eyelid and the surrounding area of my face. A childhood of being asked what’s on my face by quizzical and guilt-free children, who sometimes intended cruelty, prepared me for an adulthood in which I decided maybe I am beautiful. Alternatively, most importantly, maybe it doesn’t matter. There is also the utter reality of asking myself: what are my other options? Do I allow the pursuit for beauty to preoccupy every living moment, because of a desperation for a symmetry, that the world decided was the best we can be. These thoughts, at times, cling to my skin, however my soul has mostly lost interest.
As I sat in the theatre, experiencing every crunch and squish of the intentionally gross and brilliant sound design, I was struck by the conflicting ideas of beauty either being something you will lose or something you never attain. If beauty is something so easily lost when not constantly maintained, was it ever yours to begin with? The Substance takes you on an extreme and unforgettable fable of despair. It would simplify the movie to say it comes with a lesson, to steer away from plastic surgery and to just be satisfied with the face you have. It is far more about displaying the limitless ends to desperation, to amplify the extremity of what women do to feel a semblance of worth. If Fargeat’s 2017 debut film Revenge is about the evilness and suffering men put you through for achieving a beauty they expected, but it does not sate, the fantasy they think they instantaneously are deserving of. The Substance is about the lengths you go through, after you have passed your sell by date. How the chauvinism seeps into your bloodstream and either destroys you or makes you grow a new skin entirely. When you’ve already been deemed feeble and therefore unimportant, how do you wake up new?