That quest for eternal youth is especially pronounced in the entertainment industry and who hasn’t looked at some aging star who has had so many facelifts she now has a goatee beard. But plastic surgery is now so 1990’s and its Ozempic that is the drug du jour that leads not only to easy weight loss but apparently a rejuvenation of a youthful look. This is where The Substance comes in.
Actress Elizabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) has now lost her sparkle as far as super agent Harvey (Dennis Quaid) is concerned. The former award winning Sparkle has now been reduced to fronting a day time fitness workout until she overhears Harvey decision to sack her for some new younger, fresher face and it’s a mysterious hospital doctor who makes aware of a product that will make her younger and fresher faced too. It’s not long before she signs up, picks up her kit and she is bathing in the fountain of youth in the first of many uncomfortable scenes. But the product is not without its side effects if she does not adhere to three simple rules with the most important one being that once activated her younger self and current self must exist for alternating seven days.
And so a younger Elizabeth comes into being in the form of Margaret Qualley as Sue who quickly becomes Harvey’s new star of the daytime fitness show with the cameras leering over her fit form. The fetishizing of the female form is often luridly filmed in close up like a 1980’s soft porn pop video hybrid. But Sue loves the new found adulation and is reluctant to have to give it up every seven days for Elizabeth and there are of course horrific repercussions and it’s not long before Elizabeth yearns to stop the procedure only to be told that the physical damage that she has suffered is irreversible.
Despite Sue and Elizabeth being the two versions of the same person and constantly reminded by The Substance providers reminder that, ‘you are one’ yet the pair of them are keen to have one another over knowing that it will affect the other. For the pair of them it gets ever worse driving the film towards quite possibly the most outrageous climatic scene you’ll see this year….or indeed any year.
In what is probably Demi Moore’s best role ever she knowingly and admirably takes a dig at her own career trajectory and the focus on youth and nudity and Margaret Qualley matches her perfectly. Dennis Quaid is gleefully cartoonish as the odious agent in often revolting close ups notably in a restaurant scene as he peels and pushes giant prawns into his mouth.
The Substance is a salutary warning to the pursuit of youth and its brilliantly handled by writer – director Coralie Fargeat whose debut film ‘Revenge’ was equally raw. Drawing on influences that include Cronenberg’s body horror, to the baroque horror of Brian Yuzna’s ‘Society’, Brian De Palma’s ‘Carrie’ and even The Elephant Man’ this has scenes of grand guignol horror that some may find hard to watch in a film that must have been a joy for the special effects make up designers. The Substance played at Cannes to a rapturous reception rightly winning an award for its screenplay although it’s not without its faults. This is one of the year’s best horror films that has much to say about the pursuit of youth and that figuratively speaking, real beauty is skin deep.
related feature : Coralie Fargeat debut film ‘Revenge’ reviewed here
related feature : Caylee Cowan talks about her new film, ‘Double Exposure’ plus modelling & knitting!
Here’s the Substance review …….
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