“Author: Valery Myrnyi The film Substance, a satirical body-horror film, has been released in Ukrainian cinemas, the talk of which has been gradually increasing since the Cannes Film Festival, where the discerning public was stunned by the world built by the director and screenwriter Coralie Farzha. In it, Demi Moore fights, as it seems at first, for a place under the sun, but in fact against imposed standards of beauty and self-hatred. It sounds stuffy, but the way this fight is shown will be etched in the viewer’s memory”, — write on: ua.news
The film Substance, a satirical body-horror film, has been released in Ukrainian cinemas, the talk of which has been gradually increasing since the Cannes Film Festival, where the discerning public was stunned by the world built by the director and screenwriter Coralie Farzha.
In it, Demi Moore fights, as it seems at first, for a place under the sun, but in fact against imposed standards of beauty and self-hatred. It sounds stuffy, but the way this fight is shown will be etched in the viewer’s memory, perhaps forever.
Plot
Conditional 80s in a conditionally alternative reality. Elizabeth Sparkle (Moore) is a superstar, an Oscar winner, the owner of a label on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and the host of a popular shaping show is celebrating its 50th anniversary. No one is happy with the numbers. Neither the woman herself, nor the producer of her TV show (Dennis Quaid).
Actually, at the very beginning of the film, it becomes clear that the show does not belong to Elizabeth at all, and she, like all of us, is completely replaceable. The star is fired and the casting is announced for someone 20-30 years old.
Sparkle, for whom career is everything, in desperation dares to inject herself with an experimental drug called Substance. As the procedure’s mysterious inventors say, “One single injection will unlock your DNA, releasing another version of yourself.” This is how young and sexy Sue is born (Margaret Qualley).
Of course, she will not solve Elizabeth’s problems, but only add to them.
Implementation
The film Substance is a cleverly written piece. There are no unnecessary scenes here, each decision leads to where the director needs to focus her message. And the fact that Farzha received the screenplay prize at the Cannes Film Festival for her work is, of course, pleasing, but after watching it, it is tempting to say that the jury led by the naive Greta Gerwig made some mistakes in this decision (not for the first time, considering that they gave Gilka to a film about Russians).
The substance stuns first of all with the built world and sustained style. That is, the director’s decisions, and Coralie Farji should have been given the director’s award in the first place.
However, let’s return to the plot.
If you’ve ever wondered where actresses go after they reach a certain, say, 40-year-old age, the answer is quite simple: they don’t get written roles for them. Where did Michelle Pfeiffer or Demi Moore herself go at some point, or why did Jane Fonda go into shaping in the 80s? They disappeared from the radar (and in the case of the Funds they insured themselves financially), because for Hollywood there are two versions of women: young and old. There is no middle ground. And we are talking now about world-famous names. What can we say about those who are lower in rank.
Farji’s satirical view is directed primarily at this feature of human civilization, which is based on male perception. You are either an object of desire or a mother. Visible and invisible. The director literally divides her heroine into these two categories. Elizabeth and Sue. The second, as a result of a process that was previously shown only in a cartoon series like Rick and Morty, was born from the first.
By the way, Farzha casually alludes to the function of having children as an additional reason to disappear from the radar.
However, the director decided not to stretch this theme of accusing men of male gaze and gender selfishness for 140 minutes. Which would be bullying for the viewer and lazy work for the author. In the second half of the film, Farzha redirects his satirical look at the women themselves, who gladly enter the game imposed on them. Elizabeth Sparkle couldn’t accept the fact that her brilliance had been dimmed, and she couldn’t think of anything better than to get back into business with the Substance.
Here it is necessary to give a quick compliment either to Farja or to her casting director, who chose Demi Moore for this role with her attempts to stay young stretched to all the 00s. This tabloid news was the only thing that remained of the career of one of the main actresses of the 90s. And this fact from the biography adds depth to the painstaking, desperate performance of Moore, who, let’s face it, was never an outstanding actress. Before us, in a certain sense, of course, a return, but only in a certain way: will Moore start receiving interesting offers after Substance? The question is open. And whether she wants to act further – also.
The movement towards the search for youth becomes false for Elizabeth. As Farzha wisely tells us, one cannot change and remain the same. A replicant twice the age of Elizabeth, Sue becomes enamored with the success and beauty of her own body and begins to parasitize her, as it is called in the film, matrix self.
A young and an old version of the same woman (sounds complicated, but everything is simple in the film) do not know how to communicate with each other. They have no dialogue because of self-hatred: the young self and the old self. The substance itself in this case is nothing. Abstraction. The answer to man’s request to be perfect and eternally young.
All this would not have been called a masterpiece if it were not for the film language that Coralie Farzha chose for her film. The world in Substance looks like a fancy supermarket from the 80s the size of an entire city. There are many colors, many products, everything is in a hurry to sell itself. Close-ups, expressive angles suit the intense body-horror, which gradually unfolds in the film.
Before us is not Cronenberg, who is usually mentioned with the word body-horror, but rather Stuart Gordon’s Reanimator, which meets Robert Zemeckis’s Death Belongs to Her (with Lynch pinch).
At the same time, the picture here is not wallpaper. The body of the film has its own desire to express itself and joke. For example, about asses. There are many of them here, they are different, they oppose each other and also form a certain wisdom: every age has its own ass, and that’s normal.
The men in the film are deliberately unattractive and neglected: they can. Each eaten chicken leg literally jumps out on the body: let’s repeat – literally.
That being said, Substance is, in a sense, Elizabeth Sparkle’s POV. We watch how she looks at the world. And she also perceives it as a supermarket, as a place for the young, as a frenzy of the flesh. Men trampled a path, and she walked along it. To say at the same time that Farzha sympathizes with his heroine (in both of its guises) is not possible. She looks at her with the gaze of a researcher and observes where ts e mutilated body will eventually lead itself: to the same star from the Hollywood Walk of Fame, to dissolve on it as if on an altar in a desperate attempt to remain forever young.
The substance is the NV verdict
9/10
The film Substance is a stunning and bold combination of vision and substance. Carefully constructed world and history. Korali Farzha walked by stupid social norms, beauty standards that no one needs, and if it was about the body, she hit all our dances around it with this body.
Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley diligently and passionately played both the body itself and, in fact, the blow.
Substance
The Substance
2024 year
France, Great Britain, USA
Director: Korali Farzha
Starring: Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid, Hugo Diego Garcia and others.