News culture Before causing a sensation with The Substance, the director of the horror film of the moment was… a fairy in this French cartoon show
Published on 11/15/2024 at 7:20 p.m.
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It is one of the films that caused a sensation at the Cannes Film Festival. Awarded for best screenplay, The Substance had a very good start at the national box office. The opportunity to return to the film, but also its director, whose face may be familiar to you.
If you are a horror movie lover, you cannot have missed this The Substance. The horror thriller, from French director Coralie Fargeat, tells the story of Elisabeth Sparkle, star of an aerobics show. She is fired on her 50th birthday because she is considered too old by her boss. She almost falls into depression before being contacted by a mysterious laboratory which offers her a miraculous substance. If she decides to inject it, she will become a better version of herself by becoming more beautiful, younger and more perfect.
A fairy past
Now let’s get back to the making of the thriller. Coralie Fargeat directs operations. Previously, she was at the helm of two short films, The Telegram (2003) et Reality+ (2014) before making his first feature film, Revenge (2017). It was also presented at the Cannes Film Festival before its release in theaters, but it did not win any distinction. Then follows The Substance which has only just been released in France. But a post on X (formerly Twitter) will bring to light another archive of his career. Coralie Fargeat is the co-creator of The Bell Fairies (2008-2014), a 6-minute comedy sketch series broadcast on TF1 in the youth show TFou. We can therefore see her interpret the role of the fairy Pata alongside Marie-Laure Descoureaux and Anne-Élisabeth Blateau, known for Scène de Ménages.
A very good start
The horror thriller was released on November 6 in all theaters in France. Spectators were able to appreciate the gory sequences and the emotions that Coralie Fargeat wanted to transcribe. And it must be said that the welcome was there. The Substance is certainly sixth in the French box office from November 6 to 12, 2024 with more than 210,000 admissions, but above all it is the one which obtains the second best average per copy of the week. On the podium, we find Love phew with more than 700,000 entries, Mr Aznavour with 410,535 entries and Juror #2 with just under 385,000 entries.
The Substance has nothing to be ashamed of its behemoths. Indeed, it does much better than Titane by Julia Ducournau, crowned with the Palme d’Or in 2021, which had barely exceeded 60,000 admissions over the same period at the time. For its part, the Palme d’Or 2024 is doing very well. Anora only needed a single week to become Sean Baker’s biggest success in France and is already approaching 400,000 cumulative admissions.
