It’s a truth universally accepted that a woman over the age of 50 may as well disappear – especially if she’s in show business. Writer/director Coralie Fargeat knows that’s the ugly and unfair belief of our ageist and sexist times, and isn’t interested in pretending that this deeply unfair societal norm will be solved with a happily-ever-after movie ending. Instead, she uses Hollywood nightmare The Substance to deliver an excoriating, stomach-churning, and utterly brilliant assault on how society discards women when they reach this age.
As with her first feature, rape revenge action thriller Revenge, Fargeat shows women dealing with the male gaze. However, there’s a major difference: In Revenge, avoiding lascivious looks is a matter of life and death for protagonist Jen. In The Substance, aging actress Elisabeth Sparkle (Moore) is terrified that men will stop looking. A former Oscar winner, she’s reduced to hosting morning TV aerobics. Her show nominally targets middle-aged women, but her real audience is network executive Harvey, a grotesque and gluttonous buffoon given vile life by a sublimely overblown Dennis Quaid. When Elisabeth hits 50, her show comes off the air and her pictures come down from the studio wall. Her solution is to become a younger and therefore “better” version of herself. That’s when, through the miracle of suspect beauty science, Eve pulls out her own rib and creates life in the form of Sue (Qualley). That birth is just as graphic and bloody as it sounds, as is their gooey symbiosis: two bodies, two lives, one person, no escape.
Revenge proved that Fargeat can combine astonishing, lurid, hyperpsychosexualized visuals with incisive social commentary. Yet there’s a vibrant audaciousness to The Substance that’s matched and complemented by her cool examination of the cost of youth and beauty. She can swing between cerebral drama and body horror, but this is definitely not a Cronenberg knockoff. Yes, there are nods to his earliest, most monstrous works like The Brood and The Fly, but Fargeat is an incredible film historian. She doesn’t simply emulate extreme body horror like Tetsuo and Tokyo Gore Police but uses them as guides to show exactly how far she can go – and then inches past them. She’s also unafraid to show both Elisabeth and Sue as sexual beings, not least because the only reason Elisabeth is doing any of this is to be young and hot and lithe and wanted again. Qualley leans into this, gyrating and leering into the camera, so while the copious nudity is rarely sexual her actions most undoubtedly are. Fargeat is unabashed about this in-your-face carnality, yet she can also punch the audience in the face with something as subtle as the tense of a word on a greetings card. Combined, it’s a treat for mind and body.
It’s all in service a rich and elaborate metaphor for the Faustian pact women are forced into, a deal built on suspect medical procedures and the next magical cream, lotion, or potion. Every step Elisabeth and Sue take away from each other, every blow struck in their self-destructive war, leads to self-inflicted wounds – but what choice does she/they have? Fargeat is screaming about how unfair this all is, but she focuses that righteous rage through two stunning central performances. Qualley exercises the same kind of calculating horniness she showed in last year’s BDSM black comedy Sanctuary, but this is new territory for Moore. There’s an element of bitter observation and critique of her own life and career that only she could provide – after all, she’s been dealing with accusations of being “too old” since she got naked in 1996 for Striptease at the venerable age of 34. Now, it’s hard to imagine more perfect casting for a film about how society treats peri- and postmenopausal women like monsters.
This article appears in September 20 • 2024.