It took him barely two feature films to blow up the Cannes Film Festival. A look back at the bloody career of Coralie Fargeat, the director of The Substance.
Every year it's the same thing. The Cannes Film Festival's programming allows itself a foray into horror cinema… and traumatizes the freeloaders who came to show off on the red carpet. The 2024 edition was much stronger than the previous ones with The Substanceradical body horror confronting the ideal of feminine beauty with its monstrous social standards. A bazooka shot into the anthill of rhinestones and sequins, dubbed a real horror filmin all its most visceral aspects.
Incredible but true, The Bad Kid of the very prestigious official competition is only the second feature film by its director Coralie Fargeat. Thanks to a more or less hybrid production system and in the face of the more or less proven reluctance that restricts horror cinema in France, it has managed to rise very high… without ever making concessions on its style , noisy, highly symbolic and above all extremely generous. By what miracle? On the occasion of the release of The Substance in France on November 6, 2024, we discussed it directly with her.
The flower with the gun
At the end of the 1990s, Coralie Fargeat was a student at Sciences-Po. She, who has wanted to be a director since her adolescence, entered the school while waiting to have the sufficient level of study for the famous Fémis competition. Except that after three years, she doesn't want to extend her student card. Always eager to learn about directing, she spots a filming taking place in the courtyard.
“I went to see the first assistant and told him: Well, I want to work on films, etc. And he called me a few months later because he was looking for an intern for an American film that was coming to be shot in France. »
This film is Passion of Mind, From one Dream to another in the language of Méliès. And at the head of its cast, we find – premonitory irony, sign of destiny? – none other than Hollywood star Demi Moore. The experience is rich in lessons and motivates her to continue on this path. In the early 2000s, she therefore manages to put together a short film, The Telegram. Adapted from a short story by Iain Crichton Smith, it tells of the difficult wait of two women with acquaintances at the front during the war. A touching first essay, but still far from the pop and dirty worlds that are already on his mind:
“I was trying to meet several constraints of a first film. You have to find a story that isn't too expensive. And at the time, I was already a fan of the genre. So I already had big ambitions. But I knew very well that I couldn't write a Star Wars remake or something that would be undoable. I had to find an idea that could both work in the French system of short films where I was operating and at the same time still allow me to stage what interested me.
That's why I thought about this short story that I had read in sixth grade in English class, which had all the ingredients of films that speak to me, namely a fairly simple device, but which precisely relies a lot on the staging to build a climate of suspense, of waiting, where everything is still, where there is really a kind of western atmosphere to be built. »
The Telegram made several Festivals, won several prizes and was even the subject of an acquisition by France 2, a more than honorable career for a first film. Building on this success, Coralie Fargeat decided to really devote herself to the universes that attracted her, therefore leaning more into science fiction, even horror. That's when she hits the first wall. Difficult to propose such projects in France. She tries to set up a new short and fails. She therefore tried her hand at long-form writing, always in vain.
“And it was there, in fact, that I said to myself that I would have to make a second short film, which would be in a register showing a little more of what I really want to do in a feature film . »
Revenge
Good thing, the Audi Talents Awards are looming, a competition open, for once, to science fiction. She takes part…and wins with a much more ambitious short film: Reality +. Either the description of a future society or the standards of beauty are so demanding that ordinary gentlemen and ladies can choose to approach a false appearance straight out of a magazine. The only downside: they only have 12 hours of battery life… unless they choose to unlock their chip.
This is what we call announcing your desires: Reality + foreshadows so much The Substance that we could almost see in him an alternative version, where alienated individuals can still change their minds and experience a happy ending, sparing themselves the Homeric last act which will shake the Croisette. Some very precise details are even already present, such as these underground places which are accessed via a half-closed shutter. And above all, Fargeat proves that it knows how to manage artificial universes, and therefore a myriad of special effects. The road to the first feature film will not be a long, quiet river..
In parallel, she forms La Squadra with her comradesa group made up of filmmakers who also have genre interests. Once a month, they meet to meet industry professionals and help each other. A group from which Nolwenn Lemesle, future director of Heirs. The director completes her training with a workshop that she ultimately does well at La Fémis, this one reserved for active artists, and which consists of developing a script alongside other authors.
However, his science fiction project is once again considered too unsuitable for the expectations of the French industry. The experience nevertheless showed her the difficulties she faces. And it is with these precious years of reflection that she begins writing a new feature film, Revenge.
In order to carry out this particularly naughty project, where a young woman takes revenge, in blood and tears, on her attackers in the middle of a desert, she overcomes the language barrier. Shot in Morocco, produced in France, the film employs an international cast, who speak half the time in French, half the time in English, which facilitates its export around the world.
At least, half of its 9 minutes of dialogue. In order to convince the investors, who will increase the budget to a little more than 2 million dollars, and not sell a simple series B, she writes her direction with precision and goes so far as to put together a little trailer.
A bet that hits the mark. In France, the film has received 38,427 admissions and, as is often the case in these cases, received good reviews from the specialist press. In the United States, on the other hand, it works very well and above all makes a strong impression : press and public are seduced by the radicality of the proposal in a post-M contexte Too imbued with the violence depicted in the film. In 2018, Fargeat will already tell us about the difficulty of filming:
“Filming was truly hell. Extremely long, exhausting days, [Matilda Lutz] had 4 hours of makeup a day, we were filming in Morocco in February, there was a freezing wind…”
A Substance
After this international success, it is time to tackle his second feature film. Unlike French Revenge, The Substance is a completely Anglo-Saxon film, with American funds, American actresses and an English production studio: Working Title. Thanks to these, the director nevertheless tries to preserve a very European freedom of approachvital for such an ambitious project and which also resonated sufficiently with Demi Moore for her to agree to participate after reading the script.
“So there was already the desire to co-produce the project, to be a producer, and then look for partners who could give me what I needed. And then that of putting a foot in the American system, while keeping a part of European roots to preserve the artistic vision of the film and my way of doing things. »
There is still French DNA in this latest film, since in addition to its presence in the production, the artificial Los Angeles in which the action takes place is in reality… the south of France. A choice which allows the filming to cover its costs and to grant all the necessary latitude. The production manager Nicolas Royer, contacted by Fargeat and at the origin of this plan, will also explain to the CNC that the then brand new Palme d’Or won by Titanium confirmed Working Title in this choice.
The Substance, it's the best of both worldsand a compromise in which the filmmaker completely flourishes. She learned from her experience. Rather than incorporating its iconic battery of inserts and close-ups into the classic schedule, as for Revengeit grants itself filming slots entirely dedicated to these segments, with a very small team:
“I said: on this film, for me, the inserts are as important as any other shot in the film and it's really the heart of the direction. Let's make sure that we have a part of the shoot where we stay with five people and therefore we have a longer time to shoot these shots, which are fundamental for me. »
And above all, she can make sure to use the vast majority of prosthetic effects (signed Pierre-Olivier Persin), in accordance with the carnal dimension of her story. A more American system, coherent in its universe, but which sacrifices nothing of the artistic freedom dear to European industries. A very powerful cocktail… and ideal to sip at film festivals. The main ingredient remaining the radicality of a scenario that she never tried to temper :
“Because from the same idea, there are different films. And for me, that's really what writing is, it's finding your own film. Directing comes to me at the same time as writing. In fact, I look for a lot of visuals, I listen to a lot of music. The layers that will lead to excess, to non-restraint, are the things that please me the most.
That is to say, I'm going to look for that, actually. I go for this almost trance-like state, where I enter a scene that I visualize, that I hear and which above all allows me to express an energy of letting go, a cathartic energy. And I'm going to look for those scenes. In fact, in writing, I almost construct my films to be able to express these scenes. »
The result is a stunned Cannes audience, a screenplay prize and above all a huge success (more than $42 million at the box office at the time of writing), notably thanks to the very effective promotion of the film. Mubi distributor.
To hear her say, Coralie Fargeat seems to have found the system that suits her and allows her to develop her stories full of blood and flesh without going into exile across the Atlantic, with all the constraints that entails. Some would say that it has circumvented the reluctance of French production for certain types of projects. We rather think that she knew how to get the best out of her country's cinema.
