A blood-drenched action painting of nightmarish feminist body-horror in a deluxe visual package, The Substance is the most WTF film to play in the Cannes film festival’s main competition since Titane (2021). Indeed, French writer-director Coralie Fargeat’s second feature is sure to draw comparisons to Julia Ducournau’s lurid Palme d’Or winner, though the parallels are fairly cosmetic. Featuring Demi Moore’s best performance in decades, alongside buzzy rising star Margaret Qualley, this darkly hilarious pulp shocker is low on tasteful restraint but big on splatterpunk monster-movie energy.
Fargeat’s feature debut, the graphically violent sexual assault thriller Revenge (2017), worked hard to create visceral revulsion in viewers. The Substance, with its eye-popping visual effects and squelchy close-ups of extreme body modification, pushes this icky, flesh-crawling method further still, way beyond the norms of art-house drama. It is sure to prove divisive with Cannes critics and judges, but it is also a highly entertaining, revoltingly funny exercise in elevated genre cinema. Specialist streamer platform MUBI have already signed UK and US rights, but other markets are still on sale in Cannes.
Moore plays Elisabeth Sparkle, long-running host of an old-school TV fitness show in the Jane Fonda mode. She has a loyal fanbase and her own star on Hollywood Boulevard, but she is past the age of 50 now, the death knell for female stars caught in the sexist double standards of a male-dominated industry. Indeed, her boorish reptilian boss Harvey (Dennis Quaid) makes it painfully clear he is already seeking to replace Elisabeth with a hotter, younger model.
Plunged into despair by enforced early retirement, Elisabeth follows a cryptic set of clues to a shadowy organisation whose mysterious serum promises clients rebirth as younger, fitter, better version of themselves. Without revealing too much here, this process essentially involves people physically dividing into two bodies, one younger and one older. The crucial catch is that the pair must agree to a strict seven-day rota system, with one going into hibernation while the other lives a normal life, switching places again at the end of each week.
A simple plan with a firm schedule. What could possibly go wrong? Spoiler alert: everything, of course. Firstly the perky younger version of Elisabeth (Qualley), calling herself Sue, sails through the audition to replace her older self on the revamped TV fitness show, where she becomes a ratings-busting, booty-shaking sensation. Relishing the fame and attention, Sue begins to resent her obligations to Elisabeth, playing fast and loose with the seven-day body-swap deadline in order to party more and work harder. But this rule-breaking has a terrible effect on Elisabeth, whose body begins to rapidly decay with each of Sue’s transgressions.
The two women begin a bitter inter-generational feud, despite being mutually dependent on each other for survival. Elisabeth could stop the process at any time, effectively killing Sue, but behind her mounting feelings of jealousy, she also fears losing this last link to her own fading glory days of mass adoration. There is a lot to unpack here, about woman driven to self-destructive extremes by internalised misogyny, competing with each other for male approval and wider social validation.
The Substance gets a little too bogged down in its draggy mid-section, taking too long to explore the nightmarish consequences of Elisabeth’s body-double experiment, which have been screamingly obvious to viewers right from the opening scene. But Fargeat redeems herself with a bravura finale, in which a live TV broadcast escalates into a gloriously deranged rampage of blood-spurting, shape-shifting, hardcore monster carnage. Pierre-Olivier Persin’s special make-up effects here, seemingly a fusion of old-school prosthetics and digital visuals, are magnificently grotesque, recalling the landmark work in David Lynch’s The Elephant Man (1980) and John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982)
Even within its own heightened cartoon reality, The Substance demands a huge suspension of disbelief. The notion that anyone, let alone a famous TV star, would agree to undergo an extremely risky DIY medical procedure delivered in an anonymous package by a sinister clandestine organisation is beyond preposterous. The dialogue is stilted, the feminist messaging laid on very thick, and the performances hammy, especially Quaid’s steam-belching Looney Tunes villain, a role originally assigned to Ray Liotta before his untimely death.
But of course, The Substance only makes sense if taken as a fairy tale, couching humankind’s evergreen primal fears about ageing and mortality in an allegorical fantasy about mythical creatures, magical potions, and wicked queens staring into cracked mirrors. There are certainly echoes of Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella here, not to mention Oscar Wilde’s deliciously sour parable of eternal youth, The Picture of Dorian Gray. In terms of cinematic ancestors, Fargeat is an avowed fan of David Cronenberg, though her hardcore style has more common ground with his son Brandon these days.
The Substance is also a great co-starring vehicle for Moore, a rare chance to show her full tragicomic range after a decade of minor roles and quirky indie projects. The 61-year-old gives a rich, vanity-free performance full of harsh close-ups, multiple nude scenes, crumbling flesh and leaky body fluids. The autobiographical echoes of Moore’s own life, as a former major screen star whose career receded in middle age, lend the film a pleasing extra meta layer.
Fargeat has a strikingly vivid visual aesthetic, filling the screen with vibrant blocks of colour, blowing up everything from a tiny fly to a fried egg into billboard-sized slabs of Pop Art. Cinematographer Benjamin Kracun makes strong motifs out of crisply framed overhead shots, plunging perspectives and eye-catching symmetrical interiors, including a brightly painted corridor that looks like a homage to Kubrick’s The Shining (1980), right down to its geometric interlocking carpet design. An ear-pummelling score by Raffertie, aka British electronic composer Benjamin Stefanski, blends jarring sound design with heavy rock guitars, perfect for a film with zero interest in the dubious pleasures of subtle understatement.
Director, screenwriter: Coralie Fargeat
Cast: Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid
Cinematography: Benjamin Kracun
Editing: Coralie Fargeat, Jerome Eltabet, Valentin Feron
Production design: Stanislas Reydellet
Music: Raffertie
Producers: Coralie Fargeat, Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner
Production company: Working Title (UK), Blacksmith (France), A Good Story (France)
World sales: The Match Factory
Venue: Cannes film festival (Competition)
In English
140 minutes
