We get to know the story of The Substance’s Elizabeth Sparkle before we actually get to meet her. She’s a personality whose star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame goes through its own Elisabeth Kübler-Ross arc as we’re settling in for whatever ride this titular Substance is going to send us on. She’s turning 50 as a semi-beloved star of the fitness world, built on the symmetrical tease of early-1980s Aerobicise and the aspirational humanity of the late, great Richard Simmons in Slimnastics mode. And the industry, incarnated by Harvey (Dennis Quaid, bringing to life the subtext of the Reagan era in a suitably unctuous fashion), has decided to replace her with a newer model, both literally and figuratively.
But an unfortunate car accident leads to a fortunate hospital visit, which leads our heroine Liz (Demi Moore, flawless, with no fucks to give and kicking down the doors in lethal Amina Muaddi boots) to the Substance. It comes in a vial, it’s neon-chartreuse, and it offers something … different.
Specifically, it untethers your DNA and gives you a biological remix. It’s all elements of you, just recombined in a tighter, younger, more bangin’ package. And suddenly you’ve got a symbiotic relationship with this different version of yourself, optimized for The Club, The Youth and The Wild Life. The cycle even balances itself biologically, with each of these Yous taking seven days up and around and being active, followed by a week of dormancy while you recharge. It’s the perfect opportunity to turn the hamster wheel we’re all on into something irrelevant, using your hard-won knowledge in the School of Life alongside the supple and sexified flesh of youth like a two-person pyramid scheme.
But you know how humanity is. You know that sense of feeling we’ve still got something to offer the world, but the hands on the levers of power are attached to venal assholes who just won’t let go.
So Liz takes the Substance, and we meet Sue (Margaret Qualley, a supernova of pert impetuousness and maxed-out apex-predator perceptions). Together these women could conquer the world. But you know how the expectations of others are. You know the energy generated in society whenever the Girls Are Fighting. And writer-director Coralie Fargeat knows this as well. So this situation is a powderkeg that plays out in a way that won the Best Screenplay award at Cannes this year. If I wanted you to come see this movie — and I very much do — I would tell you that it feels like a Screaming Mad George take on Drop Dead Gorgeous. (There. That should do it.)
You might not be into hardcore body modification and parallel evolution, but everyone who has had to sign up for an app to do anything will already recognize how the Substance works. The way tech interface legitimizes even the sketchiest of premises. The way that, regardless of whether you’re getting meal ingredients or highly experimental recombinant drugs, the process is the same. The mechanism by which you get what you need is established and not even that far a step for anyone.
Fargeat has impeccable instincts. Her debut feature, 2017’s Revenge, was an astonishing reinvention of the rape-revenge film, finding unrevealed facets and new iconography within that timeless, disreputable structure. Here she’s working on a massive canvas, one best served by viewing on the biggest possible screen. The Rejuvenatrix, Erzsébet Báthory, The Neon Demon and Saint David Cronenberg are all invited to this pageant of the perverse, but there’s also room for Ben Folds’ “Fred Jones Part 2” and Hole’s “Celebrity Skin” emotions, a genuine and palpable hurt that hits right behind the eyes like the guilt you feel when time and age claim someone right in front of you, and a sense that this might actually even be a third Valley of the Dolls film somehow. The Substance is awesome and overwhelming and in no way concerned with apologizing for taking big, neon swings with big, neon manicures. Demi Moore has always been a treasure (2022’s Please Baby Please let us know big things were coming), and this performance is fearless in a way that would pile up awards on any man’s porch.
If you wanted to put it in terms of the classic artform of music video, The Substance starts like Eric Prydz’s “Call on Me” and finishes like the last four minutes of Aphex Twin’s “Windowlicker.” It’s the exact right blend of sensation and catharsis to feel rooted deep in human emotions and at the same time unbound by gravity, tradition or taste. It’s a roller coaster that also has a few hidden trapdoors. At the end of my screening, I kind of wanted to cheer even as I knew respectable folks weren’t going to enjoy it as much as I did.
There’s stuff in this film that will work on anyone, and some material that will work on everyone. But with the right kind of vibe, this is the kind of theatrical experience you treasure — one of those “remember when we saw that in a theater?” memories that’ll get you to take weird viewing chances in the future. Some may laugh, some may puke, and I’m just soaking in the way that Coralie Fargeat, Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley ran the table and got the arthouse and the grindhouse to sit back and sip weirdly colored adult beverages and unzip the part of the spine that keeps your freak swaddled.
