The Substance

Coralie Fargeat: The Substance (FR 2024) with Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley.

FR 2024

Director: Coralie Fargeat

Starring: Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid

Languages: English

140 min

Finnish premiere: 27 Sep 2024, distributed by: Cinema Mondo with Finnish / Swedish subtitles by Outi Kainulainen / Joanna Erkkilä.

Yhteistyössä: Institut français de Finlande

Love & Anarchy 37th Helsinki International Film Festival (HIFF): Gala Films

Love & Anarchy Gala: The Substance

Viewed at Bio Rex, Helsinki, Thursday 26 Sep 2024

HIFF 2024: "This Cannes juggernaut and best screenplay-winner is a horrifically sharp body horror thriller, starring Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley."

Peter Bradshaw quoted by HIFF 2024: "Coralie Fargeat absolutely tore the place up with her feminist body-horror satire The Substance, starring Demi Moore. Fargeat did for Moore what Tarantino did for John Travolta in Cannes with Pulp Fiction." Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

Owen Gleiberman quoted by HIFF 2024: "Shocking and resonant, disarmingly grotesque and weirdly fun, The Substance is a feminist body-horror film that should be shown in movie theaters all over the land. By that, I don’t mean that it’s some elegant exercise in egghead darkness like the films of David Cronenberg, or a patchy postmodern punk curio like Titane. Coralie Fargeat, the writer-director of The Substance, has a voice that’s italicized, in-your-face, garishly accessible and thrillingly extreme. She draws on much of the hyperbolic flamboyance that’s come to define megaplex horror. But unlike 90 percent of those movies, The Substance is the work of a filmmaker with a vision. She’s got something primal to say to us." Owen Gleiberman, Variety

Mika Siltala (HIFF 2024): "Cannes-pankin räjäyttänyt ja käsikirjoituksestaan palkittu uutuus on karmaisevan terävä kehokauhusatiiri, jota tähdittävät Demi Moore ja Margaret Qualley."

"Täydellisyyden tavoittelu tulee kalliiksi. Syöksykierteeseen joutunut hiipuva tähti Elizabeth (Demi Moore) päätyy kokeilemaan ainetta, joka takaa käyttäjälleen paremman version itsestään."

"Muutos on raadollinen. ”Parempi” minä syntyy kirjaimellisesti entisen minän sisuksista selkäpiitä riipivällä tavalla. ”Uusi” minä on nimeltään Sue (Margaret Qualley) ja saa todella saa katseet kääntymään. Kahden minän tulisi jakaa elämä tasan, mutta näin vahvoilla egoilla ei päästä tasapeliin. Syntyy rumaa jälkeä."

"The Substance räjäytti pankin Cannesin elokuvajuhlilla. Samanlaisen ilotulitusvastaanoton muistan nähneeni vain kahdesti aikaisemmin, Pulp Fictionin ja Adelen elämän vuosina. Coralie Fargeat palkittiin festivaalilla parhaasta käsikirjoituksesta." Mika Siltala

AA: Coralie Fargeat's The Substance is a remarkable contribution to what must be the most striking phenomenon in the horror genre during the last ten years: female horror. Major works include The Babadook (2014), A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014), Raw (2016), The Wind (2018), Saint Maud (2019), Titane (2021) and Pahanhautoja / The Hatching (2022). In this edition of Love & Anarchy festival we have just seen Love Lies Bleeding also with some horror genealogy.

Fargeat has an original style and a sharp sense of satire. The characters border on caricature but remain memorably original thanks to extraordinary performances by Margaret Qualley - and particularly Demi Moore in a role for the lifetime and one of the most daring performances of a film star in the history of the cinema. It can be compared with the demolition of the star image performed by Bette Davis and other veteran female stars in the 1960s, but Demi Moore goes beyond our wildest expectations... or nightmares.

The desecration of the star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is an apt summary of the fabula.

The film is rich with influences and references, but Fargeat pursues a nightmare narrative of her own. Like in Love Lies Bleeding, the glorification of fitness is a major theme, and the satire is saturated with imagery from fitness videos, commercials and music television clips. Like the aerobics show where it all starts, we seem to be mentally stuck in the early 1990s, although 2020s gadgets are on display.

The great tradition of fiction that The Substance draws upon is that of the Doppelgänger - the double. In cinema, it was most vigorously pursued in German cinema, Weimar, pre-Weimar and post-Weimar, in The Student of Prague and The Other, but also in Faust (old Faust and young Faust) and Metropolis (Maria and Robot Maria). Other Doppelgänger traditions are also relevant: The Picture of Dorian Gray and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. 

We are also reminded of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: "magic mirror on the wall / who's the fairest of them all?" The monster seems to be inspired by the Wicked Witch and the substance by the poison apple, but The Substance goes much further.

The finale is a magnificent New Year's Eve Special. The greatest spectacle becomes an epic bloodbath in an unexpected sense of the word.

Perfection in all departments. The special effects, the visual effects and the monstrous transformations are brilliantly executed. The monster is something we have never seen before. It all serves the main subject of the satire - the cult of youth and the beautiful surface. Schein instead of Sein. It is a timeless subject, but in the age of social media it has grown into bigger than ever proportions.

I would grant Demi Moore an Academy Award for courage. Demi Moore is a lovely and attractive actress with charisma and character. In Striptease (1996) I was puzzled by her determination to transform her body into an armour. Undressed she seemed dressed. I lived in Los Angeles at the time and saw on the week of its premiere a restored Gilda at UCLA Melnitz Hall and Striptease at AMC Burbank. I wrote a letter to the editor to Los Angeles Times and wondered that Rita Hayworth removing a single glove felt more sensual than Demi Moore revealing everything. G.I. Jane (1997) was a logical step in the same direction. Demi Moore is at least as great as Rita Hayworth, but the world of the cinema had turned more inhospitable to genuine sensuality. Nudity was an attempt to compensate that.

The Substance takes the breath away, but there is too much of the good thing. It would be better if it were one hour shorter. Horror is a genre that works best in shorter duration, because it is by definition preposterous and prone to excess. More is not more.