In “The Substance”, Demi Moore disembowels the cult of youth with great bursts of hemoglobin

CINEMA – When Dorian Gray meets Frankenstein. The horror movie The Substance by Coralie Fargeat, Screenplay Prize at the 77th Cannes Film Festival, is released in cinemas this Wednesday, November 6. This tragic and crazy fable about ageism and the cult of beauty features Demi Moore opposite Margaret Qualley. Sensitive souls refrain.

It's no secret that in Hollywood (and elsewhere), the struggle against the signs of the passage of time is very real. It is done for the most well-off with scalpels and injections. Coralie Fargeat imagined another path.

In The SubstanceDemi Moore is Elisabeth Sparkle, a former movie star converted to fitness. When his boss (played by the terrible Dennis Quaid) tells him “ at 50, it's over » before firing her, she sinks. She is then offered a solution to regain a form of youth: “The Substance”. Thanks to a frankly sickening process, she gives birth to a double. The packaging even promises “a better version of herself”: Sue, played by Margaret Qualley.

Margaret Qualley, Demi Moore's double

The principle is simple, one lives its normal life for seven days before exchanging with the other. Sue, whom the director chooses to sexualize to the extreme in ultra-tight latex clothing, with numerous close-ups of her buttocks, instantly becomes a star. The only rule for the two women who are one, is to respect this precise schedule, otherwise the circumstances are dramatic. And above all, disgusting.

The least we can say is that Coralie Fargeat, to whom we also owe the film Revengemasters his subject. From the first minute of the film, the tone is set, we will not be able to escape the horror, unless we close our eyes and cover our ears. Each sound is amplified, the very close-ups permanent. We might as well warn you: if you shiver when you see a needle at the doctor's office or when your neighbor has a nosebleed, you are not cut out to The Substance.

And it builds to a crescendo during the film, ending in an explosion of blood, putrefied flesh and organs in the open air. In short, the promise of body horror is more than respected. But the excess of hemoglobin is not in vain and serves a purpose. The Substance aims to question the cult of youth, this race against time that it is in fine impossible to win.

Body horror against ageism

To do this, Demi Moore agrees to literally bare herself for a good part of the film. It is clear that the 61-year-old actress, who has become rarer in Hollywood in recent years, still has something under her belt, and above all, has a lot of perspective. She said in an interview with Le Guardian at the beginning of September that the scenario strongly resembled what is happening in the cinema industry today.

« A woman very quickly faces rejection and therefore despair. Everything that had meaning for her was taken away. The consequence is this incredible violence. Not the one imposed on us, but the one we inflict on ourselves », Explained the actress. Before adding: “ It's brutal. We judge ourselves, we chase perfection, we try to erase the faults we see, sometimes we make things worse. »

The Substance is therefore also a film about vanity and the cult of beauty at all costs, and to embody this ideal, the director chose Margaret Qualley. Model and rising movie star, Andie MacDowell's daughter has already proven she's not a bimbo in Maid or Poor Creatures.

Oui, The Substance is sometimes too much, deliberately pushing the spectators to laugh at the absurdity and ridiculousness of the gore taken to the extreme. But with influences from The Fly by Cronenberg, or even by Carrie by Brian de Palma, The Substance wins his very risky bet. Although that didn't stop us from looking away more than once.

Also see on HuffPost :