Claiming a body horror like David Cronenberg, Coralie Fargeat above all gives the impression of multiplying unnecessary provocations, never quite parodic but never quite profound either. The scene that would come closest to a jubilant diversion is undoubtedly the one where this slight excrescence of Sue’s skin appears live, forcing all the technicians on set to review the sequence frame by frame… to detect the equivalent of ‘a trace of cellulite. Except that the actress is immediately isolated and, thereby, brought back to her determinism (from this point of view, the film does absolutely nothing to counter this line which never ceases to resonate in the voice-over: “ You’re on your own »).
Short film pitch
Once the train of the scenario is launched, it rushes headlong towards twists and turns that are as (narratively) predictable as they are (politically) desperate. At regular intervals, the story thus gives the impression of a pitch for a short film stretched with forceps, forced to mix crude quotes (Lynch, Kubrick, Hitchcock, etc.) and lines broadcast half an hour earlier to give itself a semblance of thematic consistency.
It is all the more surprising that the Cannes Screenplay Prize was awarded to The Substance that it is the same jury which chose to devote Anora Palme d’Or: embracing without judgment the hopes and illusions of its protagonist by being at the same level of view as her, the bias of its director Sean Baker is exactly the opposite (” seeming to judge would be the worst thing », he professes in an interview with Cinema Notebooks). Constantly brought back to her solitude through mirrors, peepholes and long empty corridors, the double-protagonist of The Substance can only struggle in the midst of a world, an industry and a film united in their refusal of his emancipation. The few subjective shots used here and there, notably in the epilogue, change nothing: like its overhanging opening centered on the glittering name of its protagonist, in the heart of Hollywood Boulevard, The Substance spends his time looking down on everyone. And us with it.
