In the next scene, community honcho Harvey (Dennis Quaid) pays extra consideration to the shrimp he slovenly scatters round his mouth and tablecloth than the girl he’s letting go like she have been a as soon as prized racehorse prepared for the glue manufacturing unit. We know virtually nothing about Elisabeth’s life earlier than this second, however the vacancy of the afterward, full with a barren, if brightly lit, luxurious house, is plain. It additionally makes her a straightforward mark for unseen events with a miracle treatment for growing older they’d prefer to promote her.
Receiving solicitation over the telephone and thru the mail for an experimental substance that may create a youthful, “better” model of herself—actually the doppelgänger bursts forth from the host’s physique prefer it’s a Ridley Scott creature—Elisabeth’s skepticism lasts barely a scene earlier than she enthusiastically buys right into a mad science Amazon Prime package. It’s successful, as nicely, insofar as Elisabeth’s physique of fifty years is depleted like a discarded husk in favor of a shinier, perkier mannequin who adjustments her title to Sue (Margaret Qualley).
Yet this little bit of Frankenstein-ing comes with a catch. While Sue can simply beguile and enchant any male mouth-breather with eyes, together with Harvey who lustily hires her to exchange Elisabeth on the community as the following nubile younger factor, each seven days Sue should return her consciousness to Elisabeth’s physique for the next week. This experiment solely works if Sue and Elisabeth can share a life and by no means steal even a minute between youth and knowledge. So guess what occurs when one decides she’d like to remain within the driver seat a bit of longer?
The Substance has taken world cinema by storm since premiering at Cannes final summer time, and it’s straightforward to see why. As the following movie from Fargeat, who wrote and directed Revenge, a brutal deconstruction of ultimate ladies in rape/retribution style flicks, The Substance is each bit as pushed and wrathful, albeit with a heightened, darkly humorous mean-streak. One is not going to have to squint to identify the metaphor for the inconceivable double requirements positioned on girls by society and tradition. This is true nicely past the media, leisure, and well being industries, however the pressures are undeniably exacerbated in these areas, and Elisabeth exists in all three. Her struggling should subsequently be magnified by a a number of of infinity in Fargeat’s fingers.
Moore is fearless in depicting that nightmare. It is the efficiency of her profession and by no means has she appeared extra nakedly weak, usually actually so. As with Revenge earlier than it, Fargeat makes use of The Substance to subvert and dilute the male gaze. There is nothing horny or titillating in regards to the flesh on show on this film. It’s typically medical, usually comical, and ultimately Cronenbergian. Mostly, although, it’s sincere: Demi Moore is an attractive lady. Not of a sure age, or “for her age,” or every other qualifier we’re educated to say within the absence of youth. She is solely, factually, stunning. And but, very similar to the girl taking part in her, Elisabeth internalizes the gaze of each man round her (or the shortage thereof) right into a motivation to remodel her physique to self-annihilating extremes.
The Substance is a physique horror film, however its flashes of violence are finally about about externalizing the inner-agony, each psychological and bodily, girls endure for the shallow, fleeting approval of lascivious eyes. For even after such ache, self-inflicted or in any other case, the girl who as soon as was a younger lady stays seen.
