In “The Substance”, French filmmaker Coralie Fargeat assembles Hollywood heavyweights Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley for a shocking body horror that seeks out to “embody” women’s struggles with societal beauty standards and the “horrors” of aging. But beneath the bloody facade, much of the messaging rings hollow.
What would you say if you could seemingly forever switch between your aging, “undesired” self and a more beautiful, younger version of yourself for a week at a time? This is the central premise of Coralie Fargeat’s newest film “The Substance”, starring Demi Moore as “Elisabeth Sparkle”, an aging TV aerobics star, and Margaret Qualley as “Sue”, her younger version. The “substance” itself makes all this possible, as long as you abide by this simple rule: switch back into your other self after exactly one week, no exception. Needless to say, “how best to follow rules” is not a central theme of the story.
An unlucky coincidence kicks everything into gear: due to repairs, Sparkle ends up in a men’s bathroom where she overhears her producer Harvey talk about plans to dismiss her. On her way home, distraught and distracted by the news, she gets into a car accident. An attractive young nurse in the hospital makes her aware of the magical “substance”, which “changed his life”. And ninety minutes later, Sparkle’s choice to engage with this “Faustian bargain” brings about her ultimate demise.
One problem I have with all of this, is that Demi Moore out of all people is the one engaging in this bargain, a celebrity movie star and – most importantly – acknowledged “sex symbol”. Without wanting to discredit the negative impacts of aging on even the most famous female celebrities, is Demi Moore not facing a very different reality than the “average” woman?
Aside from the aging dimension, the film alludes to the general issues of impossible body standards and the anxiety these induce in women – in any industry but in the media industry in particular. This is exemplified by Margaret Qualley’s “Sue”, who begins to unravel – literally – once her flawless physique is thrown into doubt by even the slightest blemish.
And yet much of this societal critique falls flat, partly due to Fargeat’s choice of making the disgusting sexism most women face so overtly disgusting. From Harvey stuffing his face with a seemingly never-ending chalice of cocktail shrimp while he lectures Sparkle on the importance of a woman’s sex appeal, to the film’s Frankensteinian climax – bathing the silver screen in a visual cacophony of blood, guts and tatters of flesh.
The film reminded me of a video I watched a while back, about the loss of sincerity in cinematic storytelling; the decades-long trend of blockbusters opting for irony and “self-aware” characters as the rule rather than the exception. Watching “The Substance” I felt that “independent” or “arthouse” cinema – or any cinema for that matter, which had previously prided itself as being a “sophisticated” antidote to the shallow disease of “mainstream hollywood” – had now fallen into a trap itself: opting for shock over subtlety.
In “The Substance” the destructive power of sexism is on full display. But in reality, it rarely is. The reality many women face is a much more subtle kind of sexism: a world of gestures and insinuations, of “subtext” and “signaling”. Often, due to its subtlety, most sexism goes unnoticed by many of the men whose silence – even if unintended – does much to strengthen its grip on women. Perhaps therein lies the most important truth of “The Substance”, conveyed in its third act: most men never really suffer for their sexism, they just sit and watch the women bear the burden.
photo © MUBI.
