The bloodiest film to date at this year’s Cannes Festival is called The Substance. Hollywood star Elizabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) is far from reaching the end of her tether, but the men in power are putting an expiration date on her. Faced with one Wall of stupidly grinning sexism Elizabeth resorts to the new rejuvenation therapy “The Substance” – and starts a famous duel between two stars who fight each other to the death.
The Substance in Cannes: Demi Moore versus Margaret Qualley
The substance is something like an anti-aging cooking kit that is picked up from a futuristic packing station and used alone at home. It’s pretty smartly laid out, although some usability problems are immediately apparent.
When Elizabeth injects herself with the drug, a younger, more perfect version mutates from her spine, tears her skin lengthways and rolls across the cold bathroom tiles. Elizabeth survives the ordeal, but from now on she shares her life with Sue (Margaret Qualley). Every seven days one of the two sinks into sleep while the other “lives”.
Sue becomes a star with her own fitness show and a cash cow for those in suits. But what if one of them asks for more time?
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The Substance
The consequences exceed all expectations of gore and body horror in Coralie Fargeat’s new film. In 2017, the Frenchwoman celebrated her breakthrough with the rape and revenge thriller Revenge, eight years later she is inciting Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley in a reckoning with youth madness each other.
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The Substance develops into a horror fairy tale
From the start, The Substance is presented as an exaggerated, brightly colored satire. All you have to do is look at the grimacing Dennis Quaid as the network boss. Quiet tones are left to Demi Moore. She shines with a sensitive performance of a woman who has toiled for decades for an industry and is simply thrown aside. Bitterness, sadness and self-doubt mix into their predominantly wordless play.
The longer the “treatment” lasts, the more grotesque Demi Moore’s performance becomes, but the woman’s wounded, longing for love core shines through until the last gooey second.
Opposite her, Margaret Qualley is brimming with youthful naivety, although Sue is more of a portrait unattainable demands on women comes from, rather than as a real human being. Qualley’s magnetic screen presence fills the gaps in a script that shouldn’t be asked questions about the deeper workings of the substance or Sue and Elizabeth’s mental connection. The Substance follows the logic of a fairy tale rather than that of a science fiction film.
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Margaret Qualley in The Substance
Ultimately, The Substance is more than impressive extremely entertaining experience as an original examination of Hollywood’s images of beauty, their construction and the mechanisms of their maintenance.
The fact that Coralie Fargeat gave Demi Moore her own Death Suits Her well, with her fantastically unrestricted performance, certainly deserves applause. There was a lot of clapping and cheering at the press screening in Cannes. The audience really deserved it, as much as they groaned at the hearty horror interludes. Fitness queen Jane Fonda already knew: No pain, no gain!
Mubi has secured the rights for The Substance, there is no German cinema release yet.