The Substance (2024; Dir:Coralie Fargeat)

it reminded me of the depiction of mattell corp in the greta gerwig barbie movie, when will ferrel’s walking around surrounded by the board of executives

That in itself felt like a shout out to Terry Gilliam's Brazil

baffling that a script this underwritten won best screenplay at cannes. the food bags are labeled “food matrix” and “food other person”, the billboard for qualley’s tv show says “new show” (and the show itself is called “pump it up”), the new years special is called “the new years show”

I agree this is kind of the joke - the whole thing is meant to be cartoonish, broad etc. So much product these days is marketed exactly like the Substance. Huel, for example.

I liked the way you had this really quite complicated (and painful-looking) kit - enormous hypodermic needles, tubes that look more like USB cables, packets of globby custard - all packaged together in this neat do-it-yourself Hello Fresh box with instructions in this big, simplistic (but domineering) typeface.

"Food Other Person" seemed quite deliberately ambiguous - which one is the "other person"?

Yeah there were one or two unnecessary callbacks that weren't necessary, but it was hardly the SAW movies. That "tits where her nose was" line didn't really work at all.

Yeah I liked the home meal kit design and vague IKEA instructions for the most dangerous procedure imaginable.

movie's about ibs bc every time i'm about to fuck some motorcycle-riding goon it's like my real self starts emerging from the bathroom

idk why but i feel like many ppl are pretending we don’t live in a culture that teaches women to hate themselves. this movie exists in the most heightened-reality version of that culture possible in order to sledgehammer its point home. it is not subtle. it is also a deliriously fun ride

Pretty much my take! May seem random but I most thought of Carax's Annette at points -- Ron and Russell know their LA, certainly, but Carax's choices on how to film and stage the US-set hyperrealities there (I mean, the Super Bowl is called the Hyper Bowl) had a weird echo here for me. So leave it to the French, I guess. Meatcleaver satire not rapier but it works because it's just that, sent to an extreme. (I did wonder if Elisabeth arranged to have her house cleaner take time off or something; there's something to the point that the only two known clients are white folks. And I did love how her apartment is seemingly amazing but right outside it seems more 'normal' in the hallway much like the jerk neighbor is, and how they can just put up a billboard outside to ruin the view -- a view which separately kept making me think of the bombs-about-to-drop opening of Fallout.)

Thought both Demi and Margaret were great down the line. Quaid playing a straight asshole version of Fred Schneider was kinda perfect too (seriously, the combination of hair and outfits had me thinking that throughout the film). I did love the pure 1930s 'urgh a monster!' reactions from the audience, carefully spaced.

I thought this was great. Kind of like "Dorian Gray" if the portrait resented its owner? It also brought to mind a bunch of other stuff, like "The Fly" and "Society" and (more recently) "Infinity Pool," one of lots of doppelganger films, fore of mind as a contemporary trend since reading Naomi Klein's incisive "Doppelganger" a while back.

I thought the Hollywood "satire" was the weakest aspect, though the more I think about it the more I believe that nothing in this movie's world is entirely real as depicted, and instead it's all being distorted by Elizabeth's extreme dysmorphia. There's a telling if fleeting bit toward the end when she returns to the studio in her final form and, from her POV, we witness all the fans and well-wishers only to be quickly shown that they don't exist. They are what she *wants*, as is the specific body-affirming job she doggedly pursues, which might explain why, given a do-over, she returns to the same disgusting people and industry. It's the unrealistic bar of affirmation and adulation set by her disorder. For sure that partly explains this bizarro world where a fitness instructor is the peak of celebrity that would be tapped to host a boobs-out (in several senses) New Year's Eve show.

That said, I did wonder if the film might have worked better, or been a tad more subtle (not that it needed subtlety) had it not been set in some ott version of Hollywood, which of course has always valued image and looks and youth and whatnot, and instead been set someplace more mundane, like an office or law firm or someplace ... normal, where many people still regularly face the same demons of self-loathing or the pressure of appearances, just not in a place literally focused mostly on looks. It's interesting (maybe) that the only other person we know taking the substance is 1) male and 2) working in a much less glamorous profession. In fact, it made me wonder to what extent the substance (in so far as we're meant to think too deeply/logically about it at all) actually exists and is not just a manifestation of the aforementioned disorder. Those voices she hears, in her apartment, at the back-alley PO box, they're of course not "real," but she hears them all the same. Or when Sue pulls out the chicken leg; it's not "real," it can't be by any standard of physiology, it's a manifestation of her disgust and self-loathing after binging.

Anyway, lots to think about. I liked her last movie a lot, too, makes me want to watch it again while this one sloshes around.

My favorite detail: I noticed all the cars in the movie were vintage. Nothing new, afaict, just classic cars shining *like* new.

This movie rocks

Complaining about the shallowness of the satire is kind of moot point since the whole thing played like those '80s wild-swing satires like They Live, Society, Repo Man and Eating Raoul. It's like complaining that the Toxic Avenger didn't say enough about pollution

I didn't think of this as a Hollywood satire, I just think the Hollywood satire component of it was the weakest and most obvious and least original aspect. (And I did mention "Society.")

Its so funny that I went into this only knowing, like, a picture of Demi Moore with smeared makeup and that it was a Fantastic Fest thing. I assumed it was going to be another of the 87-minute horror movies I always watch with my Alamo Drafthouse Season Pass and then it was this 140 minute disorienting pukefest

As I was watching it I kept thinking, man, in the '80s or '90s this would have been some I-dare-you-to-watch-it slimefest like "Society" or "Toxic Avenger" that you snagged at the video store some night, but here's the same sort of thing starring A-listers on lots of screens.

My wife and her girlfriends, all squeamish normies, went to see it Tuesday night, and they all loved it.

the whole thing played like those '80s wild-swing satires

I mean...it's not EXACT as a comparison but the movie title I kept thinking of as an 80s equivalent was The Stuff!

And Street Trash!

Yeah, speaking of gross-out neo-satires.

I thought of "The Stuff" too, but a lot of the aforementioned sorta-satires felt broader to me, not in the micro sense, but in the broader macro sense. Like, "consumerism" or "capitalism" of "fascism," issues writ large. This one felt smaller, more personal in scope. Though I'm not sure what its frenetic, inevitable/absurd finale is meant to convey, exactly. Catharsis? Tragedy? Sadness?

Official podcast stuff but even so:

https://mubi.buzzsprout.com/1788738/episodes/15774318-the-substance-coralie-fargeat-rips-beauty-standards-to-gory-shreds

Yeah that was really good. Listening to it, I couldn't stop thinking about how people calling it mysoginistic or hagsploitative were widly missing the point, or at least looking at it from the wrong end of the telescope

I'll have to give it a listen!

Another hint that this movie maybe isn't depicting a heightened reality but only reality as Elizabeth sees it is her apartment. As Ned noted:

I did love how her apartment is seemingly amazing but right outside it seems more 'normal' in the hallway much like the jerk neighbor is, and how they can just put up a billboard outside to ruin the view

I think "seemingly" is doing some important work here! Elizabeth (as she has been presented) has had a decades-long career that made her a household name. And yet this apartment ... is it amazing? We see this huge view of the hills out these giant bay windows, but she has a modest TV, and it's only a one bedroom, one bath place, at least as far as we know. And in a multi-unit building at that, with an annoying sitcom schlub neighbor right across the hall, close enough to complain about the noise she is making. That's not exactly celebrity style, where wealth and fame are rewarded with resort-like luxury and isolation. And then that billboard ... it's all but right outside her living room, *facing* her living room, where really only she can see it. What good would it do there, if it were real?

Those other movies that have been mentioned, from "They Live" to "Toxic Avenger" to "Society" or whatever, they are all internally consistent. What is happening is "real" in their respective worlds, and is happening to everyone. I stand by my theory that the world we see in this is only as Elizabeth sees it, or wants it to be, or sees herself in it.

I mean, I think once Monstro Elisasue shows up, it's pretty clear that we're living in someone's mental undoing, so it's interesting to wonder if it goes back even further.

Further to the point, she's a morning workout TV personality, not a Hollywood star, despite her name being ostensibly on the walk of fame. At first I assumed that she'd started put as a famous actor and was now doing the TV exercise show to pay the bills, but I'm not so sure now. It feels more like she was put on the earth to be on The Show

https://ew.com/thmb/Ul7x7eYRZb4otfB6dv-SOyg4rQs=/1500x0/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():format(webp)/_Demi-Moore-with-her-dog-Pilaf-091624-89495657d5934f788db001bbc40a64a1.jpg

Is that dog growing out of her shoulder?

https://assets.vogue.com/photos/66bc317662b81e3bfe3941a0/master/w_1600,c_limit/DOGUE_DEMIMOORE_PILAF_0813_002NEW.jpg

"I can take Pilaf everywhere. She’s literally been to Broadway shows, museums, the French Open, art openings, restaurants. She’s a service animal, so she’s allowed to go everywhere. She’s flown to Europe 14 times."

Cute name for a dog!

even though i hated this overall demi moore’s performance was great and i hope this begets a moorevival

Demi Moore has been a huge star my entire life, but I just looked and I think the only other Demi Moore movie I have ever seen is "One Crazy Summer."

I don't believe for a second you didn't watch Ghost, A Few Good Men, Disclosure, Indecent Proposal, etc.

Nope! Maybe a few minutes of a couple of them, but definitely not the entire thing. I don't think I've seen a minute of "A Few Good Men" besides the one scene/line. Maybe part of "Ghost" ? Subway fight or something? "Disclosure," I've seen nothing. (Are there lasers and Michael Douglas? I remember the trailer.) "Indecent Proposal," no, not a thing, I don't think.

Now, I have seen "Beavis and Butthead Do America" and "Hunchback of Notre Dame," she is a voice actor in those.

She came back on my radar a couple of years ago with a great supporting part in Please Baby Please

a fantastic movie (please baby please)

I don't believe for a second you didn't watch Ghost, A Few Good Men, Disclosure, Indecent Proposal, etc.

― the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, September 27, 2024 3:05 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I'm going to be 45 shortly and I was still too young to see these R-rated movies, and not exactly in the market for Ghost.

I definitely watched Nothing But Trouble though

I wonder if she got to meet Tupac

I'm about to turn 50 and I think I was too old. A lot of those came out in high school, and they were not the movies I was watching.

I’ve seen all those movies. Striptease and The Scarlet Letter also (which was wretched). Haven’t seen GI Jane tho!

This movie is a blast. A squelchy blast

It is objectively funny as fuck that ppl are posting “um telegraphed much??” about a film with a giant ass ass ass title card that says MONSTROELISASUE

sorry I accidentally didn’t say ass enough times

'm about to turn 50 and I think I was too old. A lot of those came out in high school, and they were not the movies I was watching.

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, September 27, 2024 4:34 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

We're the same age. Except for the first, they came out wne I was in college

1992-1995

For sure by college, but certainly for several years beforehand, I guess I just wasn't watching those sorts of movies. I was lucky enough to have lived across the street from the student film group theater, which was like living across the street from the Criterion Collection. I know I watched plenty of mainstream stuff too, just not those movies.

Xps I'm pretty sure the only DM film I've seen is Ghost

Then again it seems I came of age just as her empirical years were cresting so I never really got round to watching those big famous 90s films

can i say that il monstro elisasue was soooo cute

For all the talk about the body horror horrificness, it really was the food sequences that were the grossest.

i was just loling hardcore through the entire french cooking sequence

just as her empirical years were cresting

I know you meant 'imperial,' d.l., but this is amazing.

i cant

Xp oh yes of course, soz

Those food sequences were enough to make me seriously consider veganism

DM is such a beacon - the passion of performance in her catalog, the subtlety, interpretation - she's always had a signature. she speaks softly but carries a big stick, and she could hang with the toughest of them. a real marvel of a performer and we're lucky to have her. easy to underestimate.

also her VOICE is its own icon