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Monday December 30, 2024
Movie Review: The Substance (2024)
WARNING: SPOILERS
Where are her friends? You know, the ones who support her through various crises and tell her she looks beautiful and that jerk Harvey (Dennis Quaid) is a jerk for firing her from her fitness show—that the audience wants someone her age, they don’t want a girl that’ll make them feel like something the cat dragged in. But not one phone call or text. And why does she have a giant poster of herself on the wall? Not even from an awards show or red carpet? It's from her fitness-shill stage. Nora Desmond seems stable in comparison.
I lost interest in this movie fast. Wait, she does all this just to get her fitness show back and host a New Year’s Eve special? When I was growing up, New Year’s Eve was the province of the Guy Lombardos or Dick Clarks of the world; it was nothing you risked your life for.
But sure, it’s the desire to be desired. She craves other people craving her. She had it all her life, it went away, she wants it back.
Watching this vain, shallow character, and the tons of full-frontal female nudity, I began thinking, “Whoever made this doesn’t like women much.” Surprise! It’s a woman, French filmmaker Carolia Fargeat. Mais bien sur. No male director could get away with it. But a woman? She’s giving us a female lens. She’s reminding us of the absurd standards for female beauty. It’s a lesson, people.
A very shallow lesson.
Two yous
The movie opens with a still shot on the Hollywood Walk of Fame star of actress Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore), which, over the years, goes from being adored to ignored, spilled upon, cracked, forgotten. Not bad shorthand.
Sparkle still has her fitness show, and looks in great shape, but the sagging is there, and then she’s fired by that jerk Harvey. Driving home, she’s distracted by a billboard of herself literally being ripped down and gets into a car accident. Two children in the other car are killed. Kidding. We never hear about anyone in the other car. Other people don’t exist.
At the hospital, a hot male nurse, sensing her need, gives Elisabeth a flash drive in which something called “The Substance” promises “a younger, more perfect” version of you. To get it, she has to go to a sketchy part of town, into an alleyway, and use a card key to enter a dingy joint, then use the same card key to open a mail box.
The instructions are vague in their simplicity: You inject yourself with the substance and you split in two—a younger more supple version of you emerges from your spine. (The instructions leave out the spine part.) Apparently they’re both you, but only one of you can exist at a time. While one roams around, the other is in stasis, and fed intravenously, but you have to change places every week.
I would’ve jumped off at this point. Another me? One is bad enough. But Elisabeth's need is great enough to go through with it.
The younger self, Sue (Margaret Qualley), is tapped to host the fitness show to replace her older self, and to take revenge upon all the small men who rejected her. Kidding. She just wants attention, and the desire of men, and doesn’t want to return to stasis. But then she nosebleeds and other things. The first delay results in Elisabeth’s finger turning crone-ish and witch-like, and the second does that to half her body. They battle each other. It’s less one consciousness than catfight.
I’ll cut to the chase—something Fargeat should try sometime. Sue keeps Elisabeth in statis for several weeks while she parties and is adored and gets the New Year’s Eve hosting gig, which the movie treats like it’s the Oscars. But the night of, she runs out of stabilizer, and the only way to replenish it, she’s told, is to return to stasis. Now Elisabeth is a monstrosity, a hairless, goopy hunchback, and determined to finally terminate her younger self. Except nah, even now she can’t inject Sue with the termination fluid, so somehow both become conscious. Seeing Elisabeth’s plan for her, Sue strikes first, killing Elisabeth, then preps for the New Year’s show.
Except without Elisabeth she begins losing teeth and fingernails, and injects the initial one-use serum into herself. What did she hope for? A younger version? Instead she becomes a shuffling monstrosity with Elisabeth’s silent shocked face attached to her back. Oddly, turning into a monster doesn’t curb her ambition. The show must go on, and she shuffles onstage wearing an Elisabeth mask. When it’s removed, the audience attacks her. Amid the carnage, she explodes, and, in a pool of blood, her Elisabeth face slithers over to the Walk-of-Fame star. There, for one last time, she hears the crowd roar before expiring.
It's feminist.
Final cut
After Fargeat’s previous film, “Revenge,” a feminist tale of gang rape, she was offered several mainstream movies, including Marvel’s “Black Widow,” but she wanted final cut. I guess she got it here: “The Substance” plops in at a hefty 2.5 hours. I watched it with my wife, via streaming, but with the last hour I did chores around the house, checking in at odd moments. “What is she now? A hunchback? Got it.”
Pedestrian question: Do we like anyone in this movie? Or is anyone interesting? The people around Elisabeth are grotesques before she becomes one. Dopey, unattractive men assume they can make it with movie stars, while young motorcycle guys refuse to even back up their bikes to drive around people.
And did we ever find out the game of the people who provide the titular substance? Are they making any money? Or is it like Mr. Roarke from “Fantasy Island”: they just want to teach people a lesson.
A very shallow lesson.