In order to sculpt yourself into your ideal form, how much are you willing to chip away?
For The Substance's lead role, a 50-year-old performer desperate to stay afloat in the ruthlessly sexist job market of show business, Demi Moore was the perfect casting choice, not only because of the parallels with real life (Moore's career has veered away from the dazzling spotlight she enjoyed in the '90s), but also because of the implicit irony in the fact that it takes a 60-year-old actress to portray Hollywood's idea of 50. To be clear, Moore is an exceptionally attractive 60-year-old, and her character's arc is valuable for reminding those of us of the homelier persuasion that not even a renowned star gifted with her breathtaking caliber of beauty is immune to the image insecurities that the patriarchy imposes on us all.
The Substance tells the story of Elisabeth, an Oscar-winning actress whose fame has faded over the years, a transition that the film represents with a brilliantly designed time-lapse of her slowly eroding star on the Walk of Fame. She hosts a morning fitness show à la Cindy Crawford, until she's fired by a pervy studio executive (played in gaudy extravagance by Dennis Quaid) who wants a younger face on the screen. In shock over the sudden news, Elisabeth gets distracted while driving and has a serious accident that she somehow survives unharmed. Here's where a certain strain of film criticism would propose the reading that Elisabeth actually dies in the accident and everything we see from that point on is her torment in the afterlife. I'm not a fan of that type of interpretation, because I find it facile and unconstructive, but in this case it may as well be true: what Elisabeth goes through after the accident is, in every sense, hell.
Before leaving the hospital, Elisabeth is approached by a suspiciously good-looking nurse who leads her to a clandestine treatment that promises to turn people into their best versions—and to make sure there's no confusion, here "best" means "pretty." The eponymous Substance is an injection that triggers cellular division at the most literal level: Elisabeth's body contorts and warps until it rips itself open, letting a young, stunning, smooth-skinned, perfectly shaped woman step out. This scene is painstaking in its deliberate gruesomeness, and it reminded me of the no less horrifying violence involved in real beauty treatments. Think for a moment about the butchering of the human form that routinely goes on in a plastic surgery clinic, and the idea of pushing an entire adult body out of your spine doesn't sound so far-fetched.
According to the instruction manual, the younger body can only survive for one week, sustained by daily injections extracted from the older body. Then the patient must switch back to inhabiting the older body for the next week, and the cycle restarts. So Elisabeth must alternate her life with her other self, who goes by the name Sue. Under this fresher, livelier persona, it takes no effort for the jaw-droppingly gorgeous Sue to get hired to replace Elisabeth as the new fitness instructor on TV and, while she's at it, to embark on a meteoric modeling career that puts her on every billboard and magazine cover. As Sue, Elisabeth can vicariously receive the adoration and popularity that she misses from her glory days, but the younger body still depends on the older one to stay alive. As long as she follows the instructions, nothing should go wrong. The complications arise when Sue gets a little too ambitious and starts trying to push Elisabeth out of the way.
All through the movie, we're reminded that Elisabeth and Sue are one person. The escalating insults, lesions and betrayals they inflict on each other are really self-insults, self-lesions, self-betrayals. This is the cleverest trick in The Substance: it takes the hidden toil of self-hatred that underlies extreme beauty regimens and makes it explicit.
The Substance wastes no time in making it clear that it has no interest in subtlety. Moviegoers are already aware of the economic and social subjugation of women by means of impossible beauty standards, and even the ghastly ordeal that Elisabeth endures in her quest to be valued again is only a few degrees removed from reality. A core component of this injustice, besides the basic sexism, is the distorting effect of fame: after decades in the spotlight, Elisabeth's psyche is at a state where she must earn nothing less than the fanatical adoration of the masses in order to fulfill the minimal human need of feeling respected.
In accordance with the intensity of stimulus that Elisabeth requires, The Substance is an unforgiving assault on the viewer's senses. The screen bursts wide with a parade of open wounds, rotten tissue, vomit, needles, guts, creaky joints, loose teeth, and assorted bodily fluids, each matched with the corresponding sound effect. The foley team had the daunting task to come up with a whole palette of variations on "squelch": we hear flesh being pierced, torn, stretched, crushed, munched on. The experience of watching The Substance is designed to bring the viewer as close as possible to suffering the same punishment Elisabeth goes through.
One can think of The Substance as an abomination stitched together from stolen organs: take the first act of Death Becomes Her, the second act of The Nutty Professor, and the third act of The Fly, paint it over with an emotional tone distilled from the psychological disintegration of Black Swan, and set it all on fire with the climax of Carrie. To sit down for this film is to gorge on a banquet of flaky skin and brittle bones and dripping pus. Once Elisabeth is at open war with Sue, the gore factor only goes higher and higher, and when you think the film has reached the edge of gruesome imagery it can dare to produce, it shatters that edge with the strength of interminable torrents of blood. You will only make it to the end of this film by being dragged into it as an unwilling officiant in its profane rite, because the tyranny of glamour and celebrity knows no limit with regard to the parts of humanity that it demands in sacrifice.
Nerd Coefficient: 9/10.
POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.
