French director Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance is a misconceived, witless, leaden piece of work. Further than that, it could be seen as the mildest (aside from its copious bloodletting), least consequential, most tritely argued, anti-body-shaming/“men are pigs” feminist tract since, well, Barbie.
As the curtain opens on writer-director Fargeat’s story, sixty-something TV personality Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) has reached the end of the line with her daytime workout show. Her body may be quite fit for a woman her age—Moore is still a very attractive woman—but there’s no disguising the signs that she’s outlived her “use by” date. Every time she reports to the set, her incredibly crude boss (Dennis Quaid) loudly complains to her face that she’s over the hill.
One day while relaxing in her penthouse apartment Elisabeth receives a notification offering her a miracle drug being dispensed from a grubby downtown hole in the wall. The treatment is free. After thinking it over for 11 seconds, she can’t resist. All she has to do to achieve the promised “cellular division” that will restore her former youthful beauty is to inject the gooey green stuff and carefully follow the directions. That last part proves difficult.
In Elisabeth’s new reality she “shares” her corporeal existence with a young, improved version of herself named Sue (Margaret Qualley). Both Elisabeth and the glamorous creature hatched from her old husk temporarily discarded on the bathroom floor live by a strict rule—seven days on, seven days off, no cheating and absolutely no going back. The plan begins to unravel almost immediately. Meanwhile, the boss and a gaggle of alter cocker sponsors are knocked out by Sue’s ultra-clichéd sexiness, at least for now.
The film’s pace is probably intended to be dizzying, but disappointingly comes across as merely confused. It’s as if filmmaker Fargeat—whose 2017 Revenge was a full-on rape retribution potboiler—was impressed with Everything Everywhere All at Once but more lastingly influenced by the scattershot momentum of such ’70s socially conscious actioners as Coffy or Cleopatra Jones, featuring Pam Grier and Tamara Dobson whupping the pigs with righteous indignation. Fargeat’s wham-bam but repetitive cutting travels at the speed of light, yet takes poor Elisabeth only about one inch further into the scenario with each passing scene.
There’s nowhere for Elisabeth/Sue to go but down, down, into the depths. In this clumsy allegorical sci-fi romp, every male character is a clueless goon, the only sex scene is strictly mechanical, living flesh uniformly resembles plastic and hundreds of butt shots pass by in rapid-fire montage. Toenails are plucked, eyeballs shuffled. No actor alive could make this dopey mise-en-scène work.
Halfway through The Substance’s 140-minute running time the neutral observer might wish they were watching something else, perhaps a documentary profile of Demi Moore herself. If competently assembled, such a biodoc could easily dwarf the throbbing gristle and bad acting of Fargeat’s “Cronenberg for Dummies” project.
Actor Moore is so firmly in the clutches of the finished product, there’s very little that can be done. Long before the green goop turns Elisabeth into a doppelganger for Keith Richards, circa 2024, the doom train has already left the station with both Moore and Qualley locked into the caboose. Their performances are as tattered as only haphazard storytelling, pitched at the celebrity-gossip level, could produce. No question of a revival for former Brat Pack actor Moore, and more of the usual (à la Kinds of Kindness and Drive Away Dolls) from Qualley.
What The Substance lacks in compelling narrative it makes up for with pointless splatter. It goes places already familiar to audiences who have sat through the films of such festival-favorite French “shocker” directors as Gaspar Noé and Leos Carax—neither of whom particularly strive for gender justice. Which of course helps differentiate Fargeat’s hectic timewaster from all the rest. Supposedly it was a crowd favorite at Cannes. Chacun à son goût.
Opening Sept 18 at Cinemark Century Great Mall in Milpitas, AMC Mercado 20 in Santa Clara, and Landmark’s Del Mar Theatre in Santa Cruz.
