A lot of hoopla has been made of Demi Moore’s latest movie, The Substance (2024), winner of the Cannes Prize for best screenplay. And, you know what, for once, the pundits are correct.
By Emad Aysha
The movie is more than a shock to the system. It is positively harrowing, and not just on the visceral level, exposing how fake and superficial and downright exploitative the merry-go-round of American society is, and not just at the level of stardom.
Demi Moore plays the perfectly named Elizabeth Sparkle, an aerobics fashion icon, formerly a great actress with her name on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, who’s just turned 50 and is being dumped on her very own birthday.
Through happenstance, she is contacted by some mysterious individual representing an unnamed company that can rejuvenate her through a chemical that forces cell division. Needless to say, the company doesn’t advertise in the yellow pages, and all transactions are conducted by mail and through lockers at undisclosed locations.
The drug, which is single-use only, births a younger version of herself, played very adeptly by the rising starlet Margaret Qualley. The catch is that she calls herself Sue and doesn’t play by the rules.
SUPERFICIAL SPARKLE: Sue (Margaret Qualley) can use those pearly whites all she likes. She still comes in at second place in my book.
They have to trade places every 7 days, and typically, Sue wants more time, extracting more stabiliser fluid from the older woman than she should, until everything goes very badly wrong.
The worst of it is that none of this had to happen. Elizabeth Sparkle, on the same day the nameless company propositioned her, bumped into a classmate from high school, and to him, she was as beautiful as she had been when they first met.
She could have had a rewarding retirement with him, a genuinely devoted fan and not one of the scores of sycophants she and then the younger version of herself had to put up with. Her direct boss, played very effectively by Dennis Quaid, is ageing himself, and the shareholders are all grey-haired to a man.
I won’t spoil the ending for you, but kudos to the practical effects people throughout, along with the creepy visuals and eerie soundtrack. This movie was both written and directed by Coralie Fargeat, a young talent from France taking the cinema world by storm.
That being said, while I don’t want to be a party pooper, the movie isn’t that original. It has a lot in common with the black and white John Frankenheimer movie Seconds (1966), where an older man is contacted by an old classmate who is supposedly deceased.
The protagonist also undergoes a kind of rejuvenation surgery involving tissue grafts and bodily and facial reconstruction, entering the process looking like John Randolph and emerging looking like Rock Hudson. He has to meet in illicit locations, and the company is likewise faceless.
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You do meet the company head by the end of the movie, but he is beholden to his shareholders, which is why he has to terminate the client. The new version played by Rock Hudson couldn’t let go of the past, despite all the opportunities given him – a new house, papers, job, even friends.
The movie is a critical response to American society itself, where people are never satisfied with anything in a country of overachievers, where the house always wins.
The original client, played by John Randolph, is a petty bureaucrat in a bank who didn’t get to pursue his artistic ambitions. Still, when he becomes Rock Hudson, he ends up in the same position, as a desk jockey in the nameless company looking for a new body.
You also get the distinct impression that his former friend is the one who is going to get the new body, having become a desk clerk himself at this company. The guy couldn’t accept his new identity either. Maybe that’s why he tricked his old classmate?
This is all familiar and well-trodden territory. The difference this time around is that the story is told through glitz and glamour, featuring a woman protagonist, and is laced with dark, dark comedy. And in glorious colour to boot.
Everything is designed to offend the senses, featuring sharp contrasts in colour and shade, claustrophobic interiors, and surreal geometries. So the visual feel of the movie is excellent, definitely, but again, not ‘that’ original.
There’s a lot of Stanley Kubrick in it, such as the toilets and the corridors, modelled on classic scenes in The Shining (1980). They even had the theme music from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) in a critical scene.
There’s nothing technically wrong with this, but it’s still worth pointing out. The close-ups are all vintage, in line with Coralie Fargeat movies, which is fortunate, as noted by the RedLetter Media people. It exposes how ugly things are on closer inspection, everything from eating prawns to drinking a Diet Coke.
The flared colours help a lot too, along with the interior designs. Everything’s too big, too loud, too unreal to the point that you believe it’s real, because exaggerated people would live such an exaggerated, media-genic lifestyle.
The body horror is excruciating, even by David Cronenberg's standards. And it keeps getting worse. The movie is a bit long, but it gives the director time to lull you into a false sense of security, making you think the worst is over and done with.
COLOURS TO DIGEST: Puffed up pink is in the forefront, signifying innocence, but visceral blood red is the ugly reality lurking in the background.
A special shout-out to Demi Moore, one of her best performances in a long, long time. She’s still got what it takes, and I don’t just mean beneath the neckline. Margaret Qualley is stunning herself, with an innocent Disney princess look, but she transitions seamlessly into a seductive and ruthless persona.
It’s all her sparkling eyes and whipped cream complexion. Oh, and her toothy grin, which she gets from her mom, the still lovely Andie MacDowell. (Talk about Hollywood nepotism.) And Demi Moore has the last laugh here, sort of.
She gave up love in old age, but at least she was remembered. So, all in all, a must-watch but not for the faint of heart.
Great article.
The Substance has a dimension missed by most, everyone focuses on the shallowness of media regarding women and the gore, but I think the heart of the story is actually about the recklessness of youth.
We say youth is wasted on the young, and when we get older we say things like "if only I'd known the long term effects of my actions I'd have acted differently when younger".
In The Substance the youngster version literally sees the effects of her actions on her older-self almost in real time, yet she still doubles down on the partying etc. until the older version is irreparably damaged.