Coralie Fargeat, “The Substance” (2024)
It may be called “The Substance” but this film’s style – in its boldly colourful (and confrontational) visual style, its minimal plot and its dependence on three actors (Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid) to carry the plot with all its themes – is just as important, nay, is even more important than the eponymous substance. In a role that perhaps parodies her own experience as an actor, Moore plays ageing Hollywood star Elizabeth Sparkle, once so famous and adored that she got her own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, but now reduced to hosting a daytime aerobics TV show for housewives. On her 50th birthday, Sparkle is fired by the show’s producer Harvey (Quaid) and turfed out of the studio. On her way home, Sparkle is involved in a car crash and taken to hospital. While recovering, she receives a USB stick labelled “The Substance” from a young male nurse; once home, Sparkle plugs the drive into her TV set and learns about a mystery black market serum that, when injected, can create a younger, more beautiful and “more perfect” version of herself. After some hesitation, Sparkle orders the serum and later collects a package of the stuff. She injects part of the serum, the “Activator”, into her arm, and the result is a younger version of herself born from a slit in her back.
This young version, christening herself Sue, then must inject herself with “Stabiliser” from Sparkle’s back every day for seven days while Sparkle lies unconscious, being fed liquid food intravenously; then her conscious self must switch back to Sparkle while Sue must lie unconscious for seven days. Every seven days then, Sparkle and Sue must switch consciousness and vitality, with one living in the world fully conscious and active, the other virtually comatose. When Sue is awake, she applies and is hired for Sparkle’s odd job at Harvey’s TV network, and quickly becomes a national sensation. Unfortunately, when Sparkle is awake and sees the heights of fame achieved by Sue, she becomes depressed, feeling lonelier and more isolated than she did before she took the serum.
Over time, the differences between Sparkle and Sue become sharper and the two become competitive: Sparkle sinks into alcoholism and over-eating while Sue, her head a-whirl with all the attention she receives, starts extracting more Stabiliser from Sparkle to lengthen the seven-day period so she can keep on partying and carousing with men. This results in Sparkle ageing rapidly, which increases her depression and addiction to alcohol and food. Meanwhile, Harvey offers Sue the opportunity to host a live New Year’s Eve special, and to prepare for that, Sue extracts enough Stabiliser from Sparkle to last her three months.
When Sue is finally forced to switch back to Sparkle just before the TV special, Sparkle is horrified at her own hunch-backed appearance. In desperation, she obtains “Terminator” serum to get rid of Sue but at the last moment stops emptying the entire vial into the younger woman, thus reviving her. The two women, now both conscious at the same time, confront one another with their loathing for the other, and what happens next and beyond is definitely not a very pretty sight to behold.
In settings so sparsely furnished with bold colours and minimally styled furniture, that each detail becomes symbolic and weighted with meaning, and with dialogue that is almost as sparse – Quaid’s character actually does most of the talking – Moore and Qualley deliver audacious performances, encapsulating in their expressions and movements the film’s themes: a devastating satirical critique of Western culture’s obsession with youthfulness and measuring one’s worth and femininity through fame and celebrity, and the judgement of others, particularly the judgement of men; and beneath that obsession, the real need humans have for closeness and connection in a materialist society concerned with surface appearances. As sleazy TV studio boss Harvey, Quaid is so exaggerated as to be a one-dimensional caricature, though his portrayal of a character type may well be close to awful reality.
The film’s use of close-ups and exaggerated camera angles in most shots turns its audiences into voyeurs, and “The Substance” can be said to be as much about how we Westerners, men and women alike, have been trained to view women’s bodies, and how these perceptions influence our own feelings about our bodies compared to impossible ideals, and our own self-worth as a result. Sparkle’s own insecurities, born from years working in Hollywood and being cut off from interactions with others outside Hollywood as a result, lead her into a dark Faustian bargain that increasingly demands more sacrifices from both her and her unusual offspring. Both Sparkle and Sue end up addicted to the serum and its by-products, even as Sparkle occasionally contemplates stopping the treatment and breaking the cycle – but her neediness, her fears of spending the rest of her life alone, with no real friends in the artificial environment of Los Angeles, keep pushing her and Sue back into a mutually fatal embrace.
In spite of its narrative inconsistencies and various odd details, “The Substance” plays very much like a morality tale about Western capitalism and its insidious and pernicious influences on people and their self-worth, to the extent that a great many individuals come to loathe themselves for being imperfect and others go to the most extraordinary lengths including surgery to remake their bodies to please others. Moore and Qualley throw themselves wholeheartedly into their respective roles, and the film may very well come to define their careers as actors.