 Director: Coralie Fargeat Starring: Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid Studio: MUBI Genre(s): Horror Rated: R (For strong bloody violent content, gore, graphic nudity and language) |
The standards the world puts on aging women is truly appalling when you stop and think about it. I remember when I was a mere teen writing movie reviews for my little MySpace blog (don't judge; we all start somewhere), and "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle" had just come out, and there was a lot of chatter about how great Demi Moore looked in a bikini at the ripe age of 40, which seemed odd to me. Were people in the entertainment industry REALLY suggesting that women by the age of 40 were unlikely sex symbols when older actors like Harrison Ford and Clint Eastwood were still making sexy movies themselves?! Could Hollywood be that sexist?
We all know the unfortunate answer to that question, and it is one that is put under heavy scrutiny in "The Substance," a movie that examines these issues in a way that feels so authentic, that only people who experienced them could portray them accurately. In what might have been taken as some inspiration from Jane Fonda's life, Moore plays Elisabeth Sparkles, a former Academy Award-winning actress whose career has gotten to a point where she is now the host of a weekly exercise program.
While still a highly watched program, she discovers she is about to be fired because her boss (Dennis Quaid in a scenery-chewing performance) wants to hire a younger woman to take her place. Because (in his words) "the public wants them young and the shareholders want to make money" (never mind that the shareholders are all old men without a single woman in their group, but whatever). Elisabeth may have a second chance at holding the world in her hand, as she is introduced to a program called The Substance, where she can create a clone of herself and live as a 28-year-old woman once more.
So long as they switch off every seven days (it's complicated), Elisabeth can live her younger days as Sue (Margaret Qualley). Why, as Sue, she can even become her own replacement on a new exercise show (where exercising is NOT the selling point). All of this is told as a horror story (appropriately so), in which Elisabeth forces herself into a worsening situation as a result of living in a world that believes that older women simply have no value. In one of the saddest scenes, she is going out on a date with a man who sees her older self as the most beautiful woman in the world. She is haunted by the image of her younger self though, and she spends the whole night trying in vain to put on enough makeup that will make her feel beautiful.
It's heartbreaking to see a woman who is more beautiful than most of us will ever be, sees herself as unattractive and unworthy of love. The way society has made her feel that she is a lesser person because she is older is shameful and cruel, and yet we as a society are not doing anything about it. Demi Moore is not only delivering a compelling social commentary, but it likely resonates with Moore in a way that inspired her to give some of her best work yet as an actress.
And then the ball is completely dropped in the final quarter of the film, where all this social commentary goes out the window and the movie becomes this weird monster movie that involves a disfigured creature, exploding boobs, and blood splattering everywhere. It is amazing how this goes from being great to being absolutely terrible in the end. "The Substance" was written and directed by Coralie Fargeat, so she is completely to blame for how much everything falls apart. In a likely attempt to go one step beyond, she destroys everything great that came before, and by the time I walked out, I found myself angry at how much potential was flushed down the toilet.
She had a GREAT movie in her hands! Everything was working in "The Substance's" favor! Excellent performances, great storytelling, a voice with something to say...praise should have been plastered over every billboard and advertisement from here to New York. But she got greedy and wanted to leave an impression, and her hubris destroyed everything. I have never seen a movie torpedo itself as badly as this film was. For two hours "The Substance" was one of the best films of the year; in the last twenty minutes, it became one of the worst films of the year. This is a truly remarkable train wreck.
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