‘The Substance’ Review: Let’s Get Physical
I hadn’t really understood until I saw Coralie Fargeat’s new film, The Substance, starring Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley, that body-horror – the sub-genre exploring extreme physical mutations and distortions most famously purveyed by film-maker David Cronenberg – is different for girls. When your body rebels on a monthly basis, transforms you into a different person, forces you to confront the goo and gore from which we all spring, you have a particular relationship to your own physical form and all its revolting mysteries. Add to that the outrages of ageing as a woman – and the societal erasure that comes with it – and you have, as Fargeat (best know for her 2017 debut, Revenge) demonstrates, a rich, gloopy soup to swim in.
In The Substance, Demi Moore – whose willingness to take on this role reflects brilliantly on her in every way – plays Elizabeth Sparkle, a celebrity fitness instructor in the pelvic-thrusting Jane Fonda vein (or, if you're British and over 40, Rosemary Conley). Though she can still more than rock a leg warmer and a high-cut leotard, at the start of the movie Elizabeth is shelved by the network – represented by a repulsive, shiny-suited executive called, wouldn’t you know it, Harvey (Dennis Quaid) – for being too old.
Thanks to a fortunate car crash – you know the ones! – Elizabeth is brought into contact with a covert medical organisation offering a kind of antidote to the human condition, that may be just what she needs. In a grimy backlot, she collects something called “The Substance”, a powerful elixir that will mess with her cell structure to such an extent that it can create a younger, better version of herself, inside of whom she can play. In a gleefully grotesque sequence, the new being bursts from Elizabeth’s back like a mutant butterfly from a cocoon.
The young version of Elizabeth, who announces herself, on a whim, as “Sue”, is played by Margaret Qualley, and with her smoother, tighter skin, perky breasts and buttocks, and shinier, skimpier outfits, soon becomes the aerobics sensation that the venal TV network was looking for. (I think Qualley acted it well, but like the movie itself, I was mostly fixated on her ass.)
The only catch in the whole body-swap experiment – the old Demi-Moore-shaped carcass gets abandoned in the bathroom when Sue is at large – is that every seven days, the two must swap again. It’s not hard to see where it’s going: at first, Elizabeth dutifully sheds her young skin on time as she’s supposed to, spending her “old” week in her lonely luxury apartment, gorging on junk food and watching TV; a few swaps in though, and the “Sue” experience – she has friends! She has sex! – is just too much fun.
The themes of The Substance – like the packaging that the elixir comes in, the protocol written out in ENORMOUS BLOCK CAPITALS – are anything but subtle. Yes, women’s bodies are subject to scrutiny and tyranny in a way that men’s are not. The cosmetic and aesthetic “interventions” that so many women, albeit those with the means and will to do so, inflict on themselves are a form of violence. The way women are made to feel about their bodies might be a construct of the societies in which they exist, but it’s a conflict that they internalise, waging war against themselves.
Nor are the cultural references – and there are many – particularly hard to spot. There are the Kubrickian carpets and corridors, the blood baths of De Palma’s Carrie, and yes, the Cronenbergian penchant for slimey latex body parts and foley artists working overtime on wet slurping noises. There’s even – right at the end – a somewhat genius reference to Georges Méliès' Le Voyage dans la Lune. There are also pop culture references a-go-go, particularly music videos, from Benny Benassi’s “Satisfaction” and Chris Cunningham’s promos for Aphex Twin, to Hype Williams’ love of the extreme perspective provided by a room with a grid. (Body fetishes: huge in Y2K!)
All of which makes The Substance a lot of fun, which isn’t to say it’s exactly amazing. There are significant sections in which the pace – like Elizabeth’s physical form, as she pays the corporeal price for abusing the experiment – starts to sag. The ending, when it finally comes, is drawn-out to say the least, but it is also outrageous and monstrous and gloriously silly. And it also had the audience howling, and covering their faces and shrieking with laughter like it was all-nighter at a grindhouse (and not a press screening at Battersea Power Station). If there’s no glory without guts, then Fargeat’s film has those, at least, by the bucketful.
The Substance is out on Friday
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