{"id":12475,"date":"2024-10-06T13:03:47","date_gmt":"2024-10-06T12:03:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=12475"},"modified":"2024-10-06T13:03:47","modified_gmt":"2024-10-06T12:03:47","slug":"the-substance-dir-coralie-fargeat-home-reviewed-by-clare-patterson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=12475","title":{"rendered":"The Substance (dir. Coralie Fargeat) | HOME | Reviewed by Clare Patterson"},"content":{"rendered":"

French New Extremity and Feminist Satire collide in blood-soaked body horror<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The Substance (dir. Coralie Fargeat) | HOME | Reviewed by Clare Patterson<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m delighted that Coralie Fargeat\u2019s film The Substance <\/em>is being distributed by MUBI. The chic streaming service, production company and film distributor emerged in the last ten years with slow, thoughtful pictures like last year\u2019s Aftersun<\/em>, Charlotte Wells\u2019 mediation on parenting, memory and depression, and Perfect Days, <\/em>Wim Wenders\u2019 quiet, Oscar-winning drama about the lives of ordinary Tokyo citizens. Then into this catalogue of high-brow, tender indie dramas emerges The Substance<\/em>, a splatterpunk feminist satire that assaults all the senses.<\/p>\n

Elizabeth Sparkle, played by Demi Moore, is a Hollywood starlet whose star is no longer on the rise \u2013 entering her fifties, she is promptly fired from her successful aerobics show and told by Dennis Quaid\u2019s sleazy executive that she is no longer the hot young thing and that \u201cat 50, it stops.\u201d While driving home, she is involved in a car accident, and after being looked over by a doctor a young, uncannily blue-eyed and sharp-jawed nurse slips something into her hands, claiming that it \u201cchanged [his] life\u201d. This turns out to be an advert for The Substance, which asks \u201cHave you ever dreamed of a better version of you?\u201d then offers you the self-administered injectable that can make it happen. This Substance allows you to live every other week as your perfect new self, as long as you return to the old one for the week in between. The satire here isn\u2019t exactly subtle, but in the year Ozempic became mainstream as a \u201cmiracle weight loss drug\u201d and billionaires spend millions to try to \u201creduce their biological age\u201d<\/a>, it clearly taps into something in the collective unconscious.<\/p>\n

The film has drawn comparisons to David Cronenberg for its extreme body horror, but I would say it has more in common with the films of Stuart Gordon (Re-Animator, From Beyond<\/em>) or Brian Yuzna (Society<\/em>) \u2013 purposefully lowbrow, schlocky and gross, but with a thread of truth at their disgusting hearts. In the case of Society<\/em>, the rich use the bodies of the working class to feed their own debauched, parasitic lifestyles; in the case of The Substance<\/em>, that women are made to destroy themselves in pursuit of beauty. Like Re-Animator, the Substance<\/em> hinges around its titular green goo \u2013 but while Re-Animator<\/em> follows a man trying to bring life to the dead, the Substance<\/em> follows a woman trying to create an ideal, beautiful self. In a scene that very much lets you know what you\u2019re in for, Elizabeth Sparkle injects the green goop forcefully into her thigh; she falls to the floor, her spine cracks open in excruciating visual and auditory detail, and from the blood and bone emerges a glistening, doe-eyed Margaret Qualley, like Venus emerging from the sea.<\/p>\n

Elizabeth\u2019s new, perfect self \u2013 the mononymous Sue, played by Qualley \u2013 then takes over her old aerobics show, renamed to \u201cPump It Up\u201d and filled with borderline pornographic shots of butts and boobs, like that one Eric Prydz music video<\/a> on steroids. Sue is an overnight hit \u2013 but Elizabeth, when she returns to her normal body, becomes deeply depressed, overeating, watching infomercials all night and never leaving the house. This is where the most relatable moments of the movie occur, where behind the gore and goo you find a genuine, raw portrait of female self-hatred. Elizabeth\/Sue\u2019s transformations happen in her bathroom, often in front of the mirror \u2013 its glistening, cool privacy the place where women so often torture themselves. In these scenes, Fargeat\u2019s direction captures how the male gaze invades women\u2019s minds, how one becomes \u201ca woman with a man inside watching a woman, {one\u2019s] own voyeur\u201d to quote Margaret Atwood. In the most affecting scene of the film, Elizabeth gets ready for a date with an old classmate, one who looks at her with awe and describes her as \u201cthe most beautiful girl in the world.\u201d She applies her lipstick, looks in the mirror at the face of a literal movie star, a woman who is luminously beautiful. But each time she tries to leave the apartment, the image of Sue on the billboard outside her window stops her \u2013 she returns to the mirror, removes and re-applies blush, lipstick, restyles her hear, becoming more and more agitated until she is smearing lipstick around her face, hands clawing at her skin in a visceral scream of self-hatred.<\/p>\n

There are times when the film fails somewhat at its own critique \u2013 it uses the aged female body for shock value, searching for gasps or laughs of disgust from its audience \u2013 seeming to say you can age, but not too <\/em>much. But there is both enough technicolour, techno body horror and enough genuine pathos to make this well worth watching. The ending in particular had me laughing for a solid minute, and was maybe the most deranged, confused joy I\u2019ve experienced in the cinema this year. If you liked Greta Gerwig\u2019s Barbie<\/em> but wish it had more exploding pustules and fountains of blood, then The Substance<\/em> is the film for you.<\/p>\n

Reviewed by Clare Patterson<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

French New Extremity and Feminist Satire collide in blood-soaked body horror The Substance (dir. Coralie Fargeat) | HOME | Reviewed by Clare Patterson I\u2019m delighted that Coralie Fargeat\u2019s film The Substance is being distributed by MUBI. The chic streaming service, production company and film distributor emerged in the last ten years with slow, thoughtful pictures […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[14,283],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Substance (dir. 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