The Substance

and the side effects of its own prophecy

Since I first saw it, I’ve wanted to write about The Substance, the latest film by director Coralie Fargeat, but I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to say exactly. I mean, it’s a movie that pretty much says it all on the screen; as a younger generation might say, “It left no crumbs.” Speaking of crumbs, I would not recommend eating within a 2-hour timeframe of watching it as it is a movie that causes a visceral reaction almost immediately — so much so that by the end, it feels a bit like you’ve been baptized by fire, if not smothered in gelatinous goop. It’s a movie that provides a lot of people with a lot of things to say, and a lot of them were things that I agreed with; so I decided that since all of those people (who probably knew a lot more than me) had already said the things I had wanted to say, I would simply let The Substance continue to float around in my brain, occupying the kind of space that you only allow for a movie that has, for lack of a better term and because puns are fun, truly gotten under your skin. The film is a fait accompli in itself, no further discussion is truly needed, and yet, what else can one do but continue to mine art this rich from all angles?

There’s the obvious text - the feminist manifesto that attacks from all sides, pulling misogyny and self-loathing and hatred of our own bodies front and center and blowing it all up to the size of a billboard; so large that the patriarchy itself takes on a mythological nature. Fargeat is not subtle, but she is French, so even the most horrifying things look stylish. Her approach in Revenge, her 2017 film, was similar, maybe a little more raw. It’s the sleekness of The Substance that allows the audience to deceive itself a little, that it’s seeing something beneath, when I think Fargeat clearly lays everything out on the table. It could come off as cartoonish if it wasn’t just actually so real. I mean, this movie strips away all facade and confronts us with the truth that, when it’s all gone, we really are just sacks of meat; flesh and bone to be manipulated. The luckiest of us will have some people that will look back fondly on spending time with us, sleeping with us, even loving those sacks of meat. The unlucky, well, the unlucky may have monuments to them that no one visits.

As an offshoot of that textual discussion, I’d also considered writing how The Substance captures a woman’s life cycle so perfectly that it also tentacles out to touching on the stickiest of the sticky relationships between Mother and Daughter. The same self-loathing that so many women feel about themselves can’t help but seep into their interactions with those they love, even and especially the ones they love the most. The film depicts so succinctly those terrible, sometimes (often?) toxic teenage years in which the being one has created tries to establish themselves as an autonomous human. This is ultimately viewed as an act of treachery and betrayal in which the emotional umbilical cord is cut, usually by saying the thing they know will be the most hurtful. Irreparable, or at least unforgettable, damage being caused in a moment. It also depicts that switch that occurs in that relationship when, later, the mother becomes the child, with the younger of the two being unable to understand why the older one is so stubborn in their ways, and so incapable of change. This emotional roller coaster often leads to the horrifying understanding that you are two sides of the same coin, genetically inseparable. The film never quite makes it to the catharsis of understanding that the blood ties do not fully bind and we are not forever to be in the shadow of those that make us. Instead the film is consumed with the cycle repeating itself, which is a very real and present danger.

There’s the meta-text of Demi Moore, whose seemingly real-life magazine covers adorn the walls of the television studio where she films her lifestyle show; an actress who, many of us in our 40s and older, view as a member of Hollywood royalty. That familiarity is exactly what’s needed to imbue the audience with the sense that we, too, grew up with Elisabeth Sparkle. In this universe, we had Jane Fonda, an actress who turned to fitness videos in the 80s, the same decade that Demi Moore was picking up the actress mantle; the cycle continuing. For a certain generation, we clearly remember one of the other times Demi Moore was filmed looking directly into a mirror; she wasn’t smearing her lipstick, but she was shaving her head. Just as a quick aside, I’m reminded that G.I. Jane was released 2 years after Shannon Faulkner had decided to leave The Citadel, an event that forced the question of women in the military to the forefront in the '90s. I guess what I mean by that aside is that Moore has always been a feminist icon, but we haven’t talked about her that way — at least not collectively — until now.

What I found most fascinating from a meta perspective though, was the casting of Margaret Qualley. She’s the daughter of another 90s Hollywood mainstay Andie MacDowell, but was playing the younger version of Demi Moore. For a minute, I was captured by the idea of a Hollywood switch. What if Andie McDowell had been Elisabeth Sparkle? What if Rumer Willis, who did star as her mother’s daughter in Striptease, was Sue? What if these women of two generations, both of whom are aware of the other's real-life counterparts, were perfect as each other’s next form because they have lived the cycle? I don’t know; there’s probably nothing more to that thought, so I abandoned any long-form discussion about that. Again, it just seemed like Fargeat was so far ahead of me in the meta-considerations, that there was nowhere else to go

There’s the practical F/X text — there’s goop, so much goop. And blood. And congealing. And it is everything that body horror should be. It is terrifying, astounding, and almost beautiful in the way it took so many to make it look so gross. But, when you’ve got Guillermo Del Toro shouting you out, there’s also really nothing more to say, you’ve reached the top of the mountain.

But now that some time has passed since the film’s release, there’s a new layer of text, that of real-life application, including the oncoming awards season discussion. I believe The Substance is the best film I’ll see this year because it spoke to ME. But now, all of those hoards of Studio Executives that are so lambasted in the film, are about to put it up For Your Consideration. It’s basically the ultimate moment in which we see who really absorbed The Substance and who rejected it. In that vein, two things have, coincidentally, happened today that I think make the argument for The Substance being not just the best — but also the most relevant — movie of the year.

First, another news story has broken about Men Behaving Badly™ in Hollywood. It is a story of sexual harassment, purposeful/planned damage to a woman’s reputation, and the money and effort it takes to cut a woman down to whatever size some less talented, less famous man thinks she should be. It is Coralie Fargeat’s entire tale writ large again, though we don’t get to see this man-eating shellfish at an overpriced lunch spot.

The second story is the results of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle Awards. Of note for The Substance, Demi Moore came in “Runner-Up” in the Best Actress category (Mikey Madison won for Anora), Margaret Qualley won Best Supporting Actress, and the movie itself won the “Elaine May Award” for ​a deserving person or film that brings awareness to a story from a woman’s perspective. I honestly cannot think of a more perfect representation of the criticisms that The Substance makes of Hollywood than that exact scenario. To give an award that says, “Hey ladies, we made you your own award,” and then also go on to recognize “the younger, more beautiful, more perfect” actresses for the highest honors. If this continues, Demi Moore will be living out precisely the same reality as Elisabeth Sparkle, her best work to date passed over in favor of the shiny and new. It’s not a new tale, that’s why Coralie Fargeat was able to tell it so clearly, but when life begins to imitate art that much, it’s not just a movie or a parable — it’s a prophecy.