The Substance (2025.5, Guts , Bad Ending)

The Substance – Michael’s Moments

The Substance: What has been used on one side, is lost on the other side.  There’s no going back

On one level, The Substance is a movie about Hollywood’s sex and age discrimination problem.  According to a recent study from Geena Davis’s Institute on Gender in Media, only 25% of one recent year’s  movies pass a two-part “Ageless Test” – Does it have at least one 50+ female character who is important to the plot and are those characters portrayed in humanizing ways and not reduced to ageist stereotypes?  For example, is their sexual nature presented in a natural and positive way?  This, of course, is tied into the tendency for older women in Hollywood to not get any real juicy roles, despite there being plenty of attractive older women – probably even just as many as there are attractive older men.  Men don’t seem to have any problem finding roles to suit them regardless of their age, but not so women.  From the Harvey Weinstein couch to the near-pornographic portrayal of younger women in movies (including this one), the entertainment industry’s desired woman is a young, sexy, model type who can also, hopefully, act or sing.  Requirements for men are much less exacting.

Unfortunately, the way I see it, this isn’t just a Hollywood problem – it is an issue for humanity.  For better or worse, evolution invented sex as a way of maximizing adaptability.  Apparently, for no other purpose than to continue the gene pool, organisms must somehow find mates and do whatever is necessary to procreate, i.e. have sex.  Natural selection will favor those combinations that give the result an advantage in life’s competition for resources.  And thus, those genes will survive.

But there is also sexual selection, which can be every bit as powerful as natural selection.  Organisms tend to prefer mates that are “attractive” in some way over those that aren’t – a pea hen will go after the pea cock with the more robust tail feathers every time. Even though a massive tail-feather display offers no advantage to environmental adaptation, it DOES give an advantage in winning the ladies’ favors.  

From a biological perspective, there is a reason why younger, more virile, sexy women and men are more likely to win at sexual competition than not.  But what makes that argument unappealing to us is that we want to believe and should believe that we are a bit more than just our gonads squirting hormones into our consciousness.  Biological evolution generated our bipedal posture and our immensely complicated brains.  But it also created a strong generative cultural evolution mechanism which allows humans to adapt through a multi-level symbol system that produces variation and adaptation much faster and with more profound effects – memes, not genes.

The problem is that sex remains a very powerful force, and despite the overwhelming power of cultural evolution, transposing sexual drives into cultural symbols is hard.  Witness the extreme difficulty large numbers of people have with the notion that sex/gender might just be a continuum instead of a binary choice.  Some of us have moved on to a cultural definition; others are still stuck in simpler biology.

Now, place these biological and cultural tendencies in the existing framework of economic and political power.  Although it is changing, men still dominate the power structure, and if we want to understand the reason older women are discriminated against, not just in Hollywood but in society at large, we need look no further than the lock that sexual biology has on us.  It may take some time – and requires that we emerge from our current Neanderthal administration – but eventually, cultural evolution will fully replace biological evolution.  Then, and only then, will we end ageism and sexism.  The Substance is just one step in that process, but it is a good one.

The Substance – Story and Tone:

The story of The Substance is really a simple one.  An aging female Hollywood actress finds she no longer gets good parts.  When even her role as a fitness video guru is challenged (because she turns 50), she becomes depressed and full of self-hatred.  She learns of a drug that promises to restore her youthful appearance, energy, and success.  But there are tradeoffs and complications, and the exercise doesn’t end well.  Such a simple story, and one told many times before.  But what makes this film unique is the level of exaggeration and the tone of sometimes comic absurdity, which eventually collapses into extreme body horror.

The movie was written and directed by Coralie Fargeat, a French filmmaker whose other work I do not know at all.  In The Substance, she presents her message with skillful camera work, brash colors, stark modernistic settings, and an abrasive score, all designed to keep the viewer completely off balance.  Moving with a steady pace, we get a penetrating look at what women feel they must do to keep their look fresh and appealing to the insufferable male gaze.  A woman’s fear of losing their ‘sex appeal’ as they age is, unfortunately, real and pervades much of their consciousness, creating unresolvable tensions and hard decisions.  In the end, the movie suggests, it is a futile battle.

The movie works very well— keeping the viewer unmoored and uncertain about what might happen next.  The various transformations and the juxtaposition of Elisabeth and her younger self, Sue, are fascinating to watch while at the same time setting the stage for some unknown horror which you expect is going to happen, but you don’t know when.  The movie would almost score a ten.

Until it fails.  Like a lot of other people, I cringed at the ending, finding it a gory, superficial display of excess.  The movie could have ended just about 30 minutes earlier than it does.  When the older Elisabeth and the younger Sue finally meet each other, things happen that could have devolved into a satisfactory conclusion.  Instead, Fargeat’s vision extends the violence into an orgy of blood and gore that makes no one, except the makeup people, happy.  The next-to-last scene involves fire hose-level blood— more than 30,000 gallons of it.  And, really, it does nothing to advance the story except make sure that we remember this movie long into our nightmares.  

The movie opens and closes with an overhead view of Elisabeth Sparkle’s Hollywood star.  The two scenes sum up the story perfectly.  Too bad the 28 minutes before the final scene makes you ready to end the movie early.

Related Movies:  (None I recognize.)

The Substance – Storytellers

Elizabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) – Elizabeth is our main character, and it is, at least initially, her perspective that generates the story.  She is a Hollywood celebrity (with her star in the sidewalk), who, as she is approaching age 50, finds movie and television work drying up.  She even finds that her job leading an exercise video class is in jeopardy.  She is full of self-loathing and unhappiness with her future prospects.  Pay particular attention to the scene where Elisabeth struggles with her makeup in anticipation of what could have been a normal date between two older people – she is never happy with how she looks, and the evening does not end well.  When an opportunity for some kind of reclamation of beauty and fame arises, she is seduced by its promises.  However, things turn out a little different from what she expected.

Demi Moore, even at her current age of 63, is still an attractive lady.  The fact that she made this movie and received her first Oscar nomination  almost proves that the thesis of the movie is invalid, except that this might be the movie that proves the rule.  After considerable success in the 90s, Moore’s filmography does not have any real hits in it until this one, 25 years later.  And as icing on the cake, remember that Mikey Madison, 37 years younger than Moore, won the Oscar this year!  So it isn’t too surprising that Moore’s portrayal of Elisabeth’s frustrations works so well because it is grounded in her own reality.  Elisabeth’s disappointments are real because Moore faces them too.  

Sue (Margaret Qualley) – To say that Sue is Elisabeth’s alter ego isn’t exactly the right word, but she is what Elisabeth wants to be – younger, stunningly beautiful, and ready to satisfy all those hungry men controlling her world.  Qualley shares some facial features with Moore, and that makes Sue’s origins entirely credible.  Qualley is 32 years younger than Moore and, in fact, is the daughter of one of Moore’s collaborators in the Brat Pack movies of the 80s and 90s (Andie MacDowell).  So the generational differences are real.  Qualley plays the innocent and seductive Sue in an exaggerated but convincing manner.  She has everything that Moore does, but in a package that those running Hollywood will invest in. 

Harvey (Dennis Quaid) – And Harvey (with a last name that goes unmentioned) is exactly the lecherous TV executive that sets up women for this ego-destroying mess.  Harvey is only on screen for a few scenes, but he is such a disgusting excuse for a human being that we relish in his absurdity.  Quaid had to enjoy playing such a powerful loser.

Related Movies: Ghost; Indecent Proposal; G.I. Jane (Moore); Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood; Poor Things (Qualley)

The Substance – Cinematic Arts

There were serious challenges in filming The Substance.  But cinematographer Benjamin Kracun met them all.  The entire focus of this movie is to set the viewer off balance and to challenge the viewer’s normal perspective.  So Kracun chose to frame so many scenes in perfect symmetry, much like Wes Anderson does, so he then can pull the rug out by offering a totally bizarre perspective.  Almost every scene with Harvey, for example, uses a fish-eye lens to get up front and personal in disgust (like the shrimp eating scene!).  The movie opens and closes with a steady overhead shot of Elisabeth’s Hollywood star – there is no dialog, but the scenes describe everything that has happened and foretell what will.  The birthing scene, which took 12 days to shoot, was a particularly difficult scenario involving two very naked women in a small room.  All-in-all, filming this movie was hard work and tested a huge array of camera techniques.  In another scene, the camera definitely ogles every curve in Sue’s body to the point that it is borderline pornography – but that is the intent, really, of the movie!

Stitching together all of the footage into a coherent whole was also done well.  As I argued above, the last half hour of the film was not necessary and could have been replaced by an effective and less disgusting resolution.  But up to that point, the movie moves quickly, and each scene contributes something important to the story.  Kudos to the editors.

Despite all the really outrageous and surreal scenes, most of the special effects are practical effects, not CGI.  (Practical means the effect is accomplished through stunt work, makeup, and props.) There is one scene, reminiscent of a scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey, where some computer graphics are used to generate a kind of light show representing the “mind tunnel” where Elisabeth’s consciousness is transferred to Sue.  It’s kind of hokey and probably not necessary to the movie’s story, but it is there.

Related Movies:  Promising Young Woman (Cinematography)

The Substance – World Building

Although The Substance was filmed almost entirely in a Paris, France, studio, it is set in contemporary Los Angeles.  There are, obviously, some issues with set and setting— one example is the ridiculously huge billboard just outside Elisabeth Sparkle’s front window that partially obscures the view of downtown L.A. But even so, the production design was carefully chosen, not to be particularly full of real-world objects, but to evoke the starkness of Elisabeth’s and Sue’s choices.  Hallways are very long (evoking Kubrick’s The Shining) and foreboding.  And everything is  painted in garish colors of orange, red, and yellow.  Elisabeth’s home seems entirely tinged in a baby blue and grey color scheme.  Colors that you normally do not associate with an office or home décor come flying at you with no apparent rationale except to enhance the surrealism.

The costume work is similarly edgy.  Harvey, the manic TV producer, is dressed in absurd patterned suits, which exaggerates his brash, morally bankrupt position.  Elisabeth dresses elegantly but with rich colors, especially yellow.  Sue, the young vixen, is appropriately adorned in tight-fitting neon plastic.  She is loud and sexy and knows it.

Of course, a good chunk of the film occurs with Elisabeth and Sue stark naked— the only thing they are wearing is their smoothed skin and perfectly coiffed hair.  Until, of course, their bodies aren’t what they were.  At that point, the prosthetic experts take over, and it isn’t hard to see why they won the Makeup&Hairstyling Oscar.  I’m not going to describe these effects with any more detail because that is part of the reason to see this movie.  But in some cases, it took more than six hours to apply the effects and two hours to remove them.  That made some long days for the actresses!

Related Movies: Border; Avengers: Infinity War; Man Who Sold His Skin (Makeup&Hairstyling)

The Substance – Sound & Music

There are some pretty gross scenes in The Substance, and clearly they earned the Makeup & Hairstyling Oscar.  But much of the grossness comes not just from the visuals, but also from the accompanying soundtrack.  Sound editors had to recreate and invent some disgusting sonic effects to accompany the surreal organic processes occurring on screen.  For a movie with a premise of doing everything ‘over the top’, the sound engineers help give it an extra boost.

The same can be said of the musical score.  Composed by a young man simply named Raffertie, the music is appropriately unnerving, full of electronic sounds.  The soundtrack is composed of short passages appropriately titled, like “Nosebleed”, “Golem”, “Your Final Kit”, and “More Blood”.  Given that there are many scenes where there is little or no dialogue, the aural balance between silence and the soundtrack is part of the tension- and disgust-building that is the defining emotion of this movie.

The soundtrack also incorporates at least pieces of already published music.  And one obvious impact of doing that is to evoke imagery from other works, especially movies.  One prime example is where, towards the end, a version (of a version of a version of a version) of Elisabeth is entering the stage for her performance at the New Year’s Eve show.  The music played is Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra.  That song became extremely well known after Stanley Kubrick used it to introduce the Obelisk to the monkeys (which generated/inspired the evolution of humankind) in 2001: A Space Odyssey.  It also was used just two years ago to introduce the impossibly-proportioned icon of female beauty, the Barbie doll, in Barbie!  Clearly, the choice of that music has huge meaning for The Substance.

Related Movies:  (None I recognize.)

The Substance – What Others Think