Bette Davis is back, and her name is Demi Moore. It’s hard not to glimpse the aura of the legendary and declining Margo Channing from the film “Eve” (1950) in the character played by the 1990s star in “The Substance”: the more than perfect Elisabeth Sparkle, presenter of an aerobics show that its producer (Dennis Quaid) considers “stale.” Sorry for the triviality of the expression, but such are the customs of the great illusion machine that is television and cinema.
Here is our doyenne of fitness, despite her energy, her porcelain-smooth skin and her exemplary abs, relegated to the “has-been”. She is nothing more than a star engraved in the asphalt of the Hollywood “Walk of Fame”, which passers-by trample in indifference. To try to ward off the looming banishment and, horror, her disappearance from the screens, the cruel cathodic death, Elisabeth obtains a rejuvenation protocol based on injections. A magic potion called “The Substance”. After the activation injection, she splits into a younger version of herself, Sue (Margaret Qualley), but Sue quickly emancipates herself and, in this hyper-competitive world, enters into competition with his matrix Elisabeth. Be beautiful and get out!
This world where to survive, you have to seduce, and even attack people’s attention. Break the screen or nothing, that’s the rule
Waterfall gore scene
Starts a fight at the top. The story shifts into a thriller and an outré fantasy. Mutant organs, cascading gore scenes: three years after “Titanium” by Julia Ducournau, Coralie Fargeat, a French director based in the United States, also chose the genre film, because it allows all excesses. She doesn’t deprive herself.
His second feature film was, with “Emilia Perez”, one of the sensations of the last Cannes Film Festival. Some saw it as an attack against youthism, or against the injunction for women to conform to a beauty fantasized by men. “The Substance” is all of this but also, perhaps above all, a raw dissection of the tyranny and vanity of the star system, a 2024 version of “Sunset Boulevard”. The very lifted and sporty Elisabeth Sparkle appears less like a character in the flesh (not much) and more like an avatar, an aggregate of icons, from Bette Davis to Cindy Crawford via Jane Fonda.
Chilling perfection
The filmmaker places her story in a visual universe of clinical elegance and chilling perfection. She composes her plans with geometric rigor and favors bright, flashy colors, like this world where to survive, you have to seduce, and even attack the eye. Breaking the screen or nothing is the rule.
The film would be long (2 hours 20 minutes) if it wasn’t fascinating, primarily thanks to its lead actress. How dizzying it is to see Demi Moore constantly playing with her status, and what we think we know about her, in this role of a star fighting against oblivion, sickly obsessed with her appearance. Above all, she reminds us, in this winning return to the big screen, what a formidable actress she is. Anything but half a talent.
“The Substance”, by Coralie Fargeat. With Demi Moore. Duration: 2 hours 20 minutes. In theaters this Wednesday, November 6.
