Whatever else can be said about The Substance, and there is plenty to unpack here, this is decidedly the weirdest member of the Best Picture Oscar nomination club this year. And this is admittedly a nomination crop where weirdness is welcome, given the genre twist-ups of Emilia Pérez and Anora and the operatic faux-historical soup of The Brutalist. But The Substance out-weirds them all, with the help of strategic deployment of wicked satire, body-based horror, and a head trippy finale which may leave you both writhing with residual creepiness and maniacally snickering at the audacity of it all.
The elevator pitch summation of writer-director Coralie Fargeat’s film poses as a ripe indictment of ageism and sexism in Hollywood, a theme for which the sixty-something Demi Moore is tailor-made. (Moore will be on hand for a Q&A after a screening of the film at SBIFF, at the Arlington Theatre on Sunday, February 9 at 2 p.m. Info here).
Moore, admirably game and brave on the job here, crafts a wildly fluid and suitably crazed performance in the role as a one-time Oscar winner Elizabeth Sparkle, now reduced to life as an aerobics queen on television. The film is framed by telling shots of Sparkle’s Hollywood star, which finds its original gleam and polish tarnished by spilled fast food, indifferent passersbys, and, much later, by ectoplasmic goop — call it “substance” — with a thing or two to say.
Sparkle’s downfall begins when her late-career tenure as an aerobics guru is threatened by the archetypally evil TV exec Harvey (Dennis Quaid). We get an early hint of the film’s snarky satirical outlook through the semi-fisheye lens view of Quaid, instantly rendering him a caricature. As happens in Hollywood and in society, a younger model is needed — in this case a young woman/mutant named Sue (Maragaret Qualley), and Sparkle must accept a Faustian bargain to stay in the show biz game.
Fair warning: The film features unusually generous footage of full female nudity, but this warning relates more to the clinical, flesh inciting an essentially anti-erotic nature of said scenes, geared to work against our conditioned responses to onscreen sensuality. We’re reminded of the anatomical/existential perversities of David Cronenberg films like The Fly and Dead Ringers, and even the horror exegesis of Carrie. The tale’s various sci-fi twists and compromises while desperately seeking youth, beauty, and show biz validity take us by surprise while, in the third act, turning into a bloody mess, so to speak.
In short, The Substance is weird, and a weirdly compelling watch.
View the trailer here.
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