{"id":10652,"date":"2025-03-10T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-03-10T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=10652"},"modified":"2025-03-09T21:46:35","modified_gmt":"2025-03-10T01:46:35","slug":"the-substance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/10\/the-substance\/","title":{"rendered":"The Substance."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Substance<\/em> has a great concept for a sci-fi\/horror film, and an even better theme. Writer\/director Coralie Fargeat depicts Hollywood\u2019s obsession with women\u2019s looks and youth, and the patriarchy\u2019s obsession with the same through an aging actress and fitness-show star who learns about a cheat code to become a 20-year-old version of herself again \u2013 but only every other week. It is such a shame that Fargeat had no idea what to do with the story once she got the setup in place; the second half of this movie is a literal and figurative mess, so much so that it\u2019s appalling that this profoundly stupid movie got Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay nominations. (You can rent it on iTunes<\/a>, Amazon<\/a>, etc., or watch it free on Mubi.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Demi Moore plays the idiotically-named Elizabeth Sparkle, a Jane Fonda-ish figure who was once a huge star and now hosts a daily aerobics show, because I guess this movie is set in 1985 (although it never specifies when it\u2019s set). On the day she turns 50, the show\u2019s producer Harvey (as in Weinstein, because this film is just that subtle) fires her because she\u2019s too old. (Harvey is played by Dennis Quaid, who hams it up as the role demands.) Elizabeth is so upset as she\u2019s driving home that she gets into a car accident and ends up in the hospital, where somehow she doesn\u2019t have any broken bones or internal bleeding or anything of the sort, but a creepy young nurse with ridiculously smooth skin slips her a flash drive that tips her off to a fountain-of-youth scheme called The Substance. She jumps through all kinds of hoops to get a hold of it \u2013 the film\u2019s best sequences, really \u2013 and eventually tries it out: A second, younger version of herself (Margaret Qualley) emerges, literally, and takes over the lead spot on Elizabeth\u2019s show. The hitch is that each week, Elizabeth and this new her, who takes the name Sue, must switch places: one goes into a sort of coma, and the other gets to run around and be alive and such. But when one of the two decides to take a little more than the allotted time, the center cannot hold and things fall apart \u2013 including the plot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The whole setup is pretty brilliant, like something from a modern Philip K. Dick fable. (PKD did write at least once about \u201canti-gerasone,\u201d a serum that reversed the effects of aging.) The attention to detail in the way the whole scheme works, right down to the packaging of the various parts of the Substance, would seem to presage a really thoughtful, smart conclusion, regardless of whether it works out for Elizabeth. There\u2019s a wide range of points this story could have made about how society as a whole and the media industry in specific treats women as disposable assets with early expiration dates. It applies to women on screen in films and on TV, even news and sports anchors, but also applies to general societal attitudes towards women, even in what is supposed to be a more equitable and enlightened era. (Or was, I suppose.) Men who are Elizabeth\u2019s age see her as old, then fawn over and leer at Sue, including, of course, Harvey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, we get a thoughtless, gross, and sloppy conclusion to all of that early promise. There\u2019s an inexplicable rivalry between the two halves \u2013 which I interpreted as a commentary on women who step on or attack other women rather than standing together against the patriarchy \u2013 that leads each of them to try to sabotage the other during their waking weeks. And when one starts stealing time from the other, things go very awry, and it becomes clear that Fargeat never figured out the end of the story. The big concluding scene is a bloody mess, either way you want to interpret that phrase, and is also absolute nonsense: The hyperrealism that fills every part of the film outside of the use of the Substance is gone, and we\u2019re no longer making or even pondering a point. We\u2019re just covered in blood. There\u2019s no further exploration of the entrenched misogyny across our society, or our obsession with youth and beauty. There\u2019s no biting, satirical conclusion that takes down the Harveys of the world \u2013 or even the just normal, just innocent men who are probably contributing to the environment in all manner of little ways (and I\u2019m not exempting myself here, either). Fargeat wrote herself into a corner, and instead of writing herself out of it, she just went for gore. I<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moore\u2019s performance in The Substance <\/em>earned her a Golden Globe Award and a SAG Award, as well as a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress; I don\u2019t think this was a close contest between her and Mikey Madison, who won the Oscar for her performance in Anora<\/a><\/em>. Moore is very good, but there\u2019s some sentiment in the plaudits; she\u2019s not even in the movie as much as a typical lead performer. There\u2019s some daring to the performance, certainly, and she also has to act out some pretty gross scenes that couldn\u2019t have been easy. Qualley didn\u2019t get anywhere near the same attention, but she\u2019s excellent and essential to the movie \u2013 she has to play a sort of scheming ingenue, and in any of her scenes at the studio, especially anything with Harvey, she nails the look and demeanor of someone who knows how to manipulate the hell out of the idiot man in front of her. She\u2019s not better than Moore in the film, but she could have gotten some supporting actress support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This just isn\u2019t a good movie by any definition I would use. It\u2019s very smart and entertaining for about half its length, and then it falls apart. It\u2019s not smart, or interesting, or even entertaining in the second half, beyond the tension because we\u2019re watching Elizabeth-Sue heading for some kind of terrible crash. I\u2019m almost offended that it got a screenplay nomination, because the writing is the whole problem here. The performances are good, the effects and makeup are fine, but the writing is just lazy. A big violent finish is the easiest and least thoughtful way to end a story. This story, and the women it\u2019s ostensibly supporting, deserved better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Substance has a great concept for a sci-fi\/horror film, and an even better theme. Writer\/director Coralie Fargeat depicts Hollywood\u2019s obsession with women\u2019s looks and youth, and the patriarchy\u2019s obsession with the same through an aging actress and fitness-show star who learns about a cheat code to become a 20-year-old version of herself again \u2013 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1417,1448,1445,1449,1440,102,1021,215],"class_list":["post-10652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-2024-movies","tag-2025-best-actress-nominees","tag-2025-best-director-nominees","tag-2025-best-original-screenplay-nominees","tag-2025-best-picture-nominees","tag-disappointments","tag-horror-films","tag-movies","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10652"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10654,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10652\/revisions\/10654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}