The Substance (2024; Dir:Coralie Fargeat)

This movie is quite the unrelenting experience. I would urge anyone curious to check it out to do while it's in theaters.

Some people are complaining its satire is extremely obvious (I think the title has a double meaning that ironically acknowledges this), but I think it's more that Fargeat is trying to convey a sense of overall visceral disgust, which she does. Sort of like how you don't necessarily listen to something like My Bloody Valentine for the lyrics.

Just noticed it's playing at a rep theatre here tonight...As much as I like Margaret Qualley (usually--not in that lousy Coen brother film), it looks pretty gross reading up a bit; I'm more and more skittish about such stuff and probably better to skip it.

I loved it, plot holes and all. It's gleefully deranged at times and very enjoyable.

If some movies can be called "Oscar bait" or "critic bait," this one seems like it was made to appear on John Waters' annual top 10 list.

I'm more and more skittish about such stuff and probably better to skip it.

I visit the imdb parents' guide more often that I'd like to admit because I have an EXTREMELY low tolerance for body horror (I'm only just now seeing Cronenberg films everyone else watched 40 years ago). This one seems like one I will NEVER see.

This was great

I’m squeamish enough that I probably won’t see this, but hope it does well.

A colleague:

The Substance is such exquisite proof, a la 30 Rock, that the only people who hate women more than men are women themselves. Perhaps impressive that someone made a film that has less to say about femininity, the male gaze, and fleeting stardom than Katy Perry’s “Woman’s World.”

— the morally corrupt juan barquin (@woahitsjuanito) September 22, 2024

this is gonna be one of those horror movies that reaches people who usually don't do horror right

i liked her first film Revenge. i just wrote about it here on my expert film review thread. but its gory and violent and probably not everyone's thing. i will watch this when it streams in....5 and one half weeks. that's my guess.

this movie fucking rules and the negative reviews all don’t get it. also the body horror is so extreme i don’t see it translating to a general audience

it IS a movie about self-hatred. i think it has a great deal to say about it

it’s also a movie about having an eating disorder

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

The closest cousin to this movie afaic was “Female Trouble”, in terms of its plot points at least. I enjoyed it most when I was thinking “this isn’t satire, this is Waters-style filth”. I couldn’t like it or dislike it, it felt too square and inert in premise to love, and too dazzling in execution to hate. It’s funny that there is a spoiler that I didn’t know going in, and didn’t realize until the very end: it’s French.

The performances and special effects and soundtrack were all ridiculously good. I remarked to my bf that I couldn’t remember the last time I’d finished a movie and felt zero curiosity, zero sense of wonder, and nothing at all to ponder or contemplate. It felt like getting a piano dropped on your head.

My wife saw this as an allegory for mother/daughter relationships.

ivy otm

this movie fucking rules and the negative reviews all don’t get it. also the body horror is so extreme i don’t see it translating to a general audience

― ivy., Sunday, September 22, 2024 9:37 PM

What's interesting is the friend/colleague whose tweet chain I posted is trans and in the middle of transitioning.

I can't speak from a woman's perspective ofc, but I've seen similar takes online, even people calling the film mysogynistic, with several follow-up comments saying that this is roundly missing the point. I have to say I can't really see where this take comes from, but maybe I'm missing the point.

Coming out of the screening for this and listening to people speak, they could have just come off a rollercoaster ride. It took my friend and I a full hour afterwards to stop saying "Sorry, I'm still a bit frazzled from watching that movie.

I went into this only having seen a teaser trailer before Alien Romulus a few weeks before. So I was ready for a Black Mirror-style take on the old elixir of life story, possibly with some body horror twists.

And, yeah. It's not the most original story on the surface: Sure echoes of Death Becomes Her, and also that one epsiode from Guillermo Del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities where a miracle formula promises to grant eternal youth, it's a tried-and-tested trope now. But for me any feelings of "Hm, I've seen this film before" were constantly upturned, and there are hard handbrake turns going on throughout. Each time I thoguht I knew where it was going, something else would happen. It ramps up in such a way that I thought was extremely well done, i.e. very very slowly and gradually but persistently.

I reckon this will have crossover appeal thanks to the big starring names (Moore and Qualley are both fantastic, and Quaid gives a suitably OTT supporting performance), but also score big with fans of "proper horror" who enjoyed stuff like The Fly, Society, Braindead etc.

Bring a sick bag

What's interesting is the friend/colleague whose tweet chain I posted is trans and in the middle of transitioning.

― the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, September 23, 2024 5:29 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah everyone i’ve seen accuse this movie of misogyny is trans. i don’t really get it and i feel like i must be stupid

i guess fundamentally i don’t think this movie hates its main character(s). the scene that convinced me of that was demi moore getting ready for a date, a scene i have lived thousands of times

i did see someone try to argue that this movie was more misogynistic than death becomes her, which,, yeah death becomes her is “fun” and “campy” but is undeniably made by someone who hates women

Elizabeth Shue in a coma for much of Back to Future 2, Robin Wright catching AIDS and dying in Forrest Gump -- pretty much.

The ass-to-ass cut made me lol

I don’t know how this movie could be considered misogynistic, there were no women in the movie, or men. It was all symbols and allegory

saw this yesterday and i'm still not really sure how i felt about it. it was hard not to think about Poor Things - Qualley is in both obviously but also the idea of placing an old consciousness in a new body, the use of fisheye lens, the setting that's out of time, the heavily stylized sets, but mostly the very heavy-handed satire/social commentary. i was worried that my opinion of The Substance would follow the same path as my opinion of Poor Things, a movie i enjoyed while in the theater but quickly thought less of once i was not watching it. so i was glad that The Substance picked up in the second half and got more gonzo, because it got a lot more fun at that point.

i laughed a lot at the movie. Demi Moore was truly excellent throughout, i was really impressed at her ability to handle the extreme aspects of the movie while also the rare subtler moments (OK the date preparation scene is not really subtle from a screenwriting perspective but her performance was relatively subtle in that moment). Qualley and Quaid were good too but in less challenging roles.

the directing and screenwriting were frustrating, they were just so bludgeoning in hammering home the themes of the movie, repeating the same images and spelling out connections that were already obvious, although there were some great images and ideas too. asking for The Substance to be subtler seems like a mistake but i wish it trusted the viewer more. also i know "it could have been shorter" is such a basic complaint but this could have easily been shorter.

i don't know, i think i liked it?

my biggest question is how are elizabeth and sue "one person" (as gets repeated over and over) if they have separate consciousnesses and goals and physical appearances? what does elizabeth ever get out of using the substance? she doesn't really get to live vicariously through sue since she doesn't have any of those experiences or feelings?

someone upthread mentioned an interpretation of the movie as being about mothers and daughters, which would make more sense given the setup of how the matrix/other self relationship works, but it's not really pointed to in the movie itself unfortunately

i feel like my only path to fully enjoying this is accepting it as a dumb fun extreme body horror movie. which is fine!

my biggest question is how are elizabeth and sue "one person" (as gets repeated over and over) if they have separate consciousnesses and goals and physical appearances? what does elizabeth ever get out of using the substance? she doesn't really get to live vicariously through sue since she doesn't have any of those experiences or feelings?

― na (NA), Monday, September 23, 2024 11:49 AM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

they don't have separate consciousnesses!

have you ever had to begrudgingly take responsibility for the actions of your manic and/or depressed self? that's the dynamic here

in this respect maybe the movie is too subtle bc a lot of people are struggling with this

remember they are one!!!! lol

i guess fundamentally i don’t think this movie hates its main character(s). the scene that convinced me of that was demi moore getting ready for a date, a scene i have lived thousands of times

― ivy., Monday, 23 September 2024 14:20 (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

This was a great scene. Arguably the central and most devastating moment of the film despite all the hi-falutin stuff going on around it

my biggest question is how are elizabeth and sue "one person" (as gets repeated over and over) if they have separate consciousnesses and goals and physical appearances? what does elizabeth ever get out of using the substance? she doesn't really get to live vicariously through sue since she doesn't have any of those experiences or feelings?

― na (NA), Monday, 23 September 2024 16:49 (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Isn't that kind of the whole point of the film though? Technically they are one person, one mind, as the mysterious dealer keeps reminding her. But increasingly it's a Jekyll and Hyde thing. Elisabeth is hooked on being Sue, even though it becomes increasingly obvious that she is a Tyler Durden of sorts.

As ivy says, it's that hangover, that reckoning one gets from past actions. Drink and drug dependency works a similar way. In fact the whole thing could just as well be viewed as an allegory for addiction as it is a commentary on ageing, the fickleness of the entertainment industry, and the validation-seeking mindset

i have never met an internally consistent person, lemme know if anyone does

As with the Civil War thread, I'm wary of reading perhaps a bit too much into films like this, or taking the ideas too literally.
Sure it's an allegory with some not-so-subtle things to say about society and the world we live in. But it's also a ridiculously OTT body horror sci-fi and should be appreciated as that too.

While there was nothing subtle about the execution of the film, I didn't feel like the themes were telegraphed in an especially heavy-handed way. And if it had been changed into an overly didactic allegory full of DO YOU SEE? moments, it would have gotten in the way of a pretty fun schlocky picture.

i keep typing up responses and deleting them, ultimately i feel like i already said how i feel about the movie so i'll leave it there. it's been a long time since i've seen a movie and still not known the next day exactly how i felt about it, which ultimately is probably a good thing.

Sorry, didn't mean to come across as condescending as my last post might have read.

I have to say, when Elisabeth turns into Sue and it's revealed it isn't a younger version of herself but a totally different person, that threw me a bit because, well, maybe I was expecting a Death Becomes Her-style makeover with CGI. But I think the whole conceit of two very different people sharing a mind works in the end.

At first, my brain was pondering the conceit of it— “what would I do in Elisabeth’s situation?”— probably start leaving some notes for Sue and requesting the same, for example— but the film seemed determined to shut down any connection between its reality and irl reality. “The New Years Show” and all the wilfully placeholder elements to the setting called to mind Lars “I’ve never set foot in America” Von Trier’s usage of a black stage in Dogville in his own USA critique cinema. By the end, the film was so strenuous in its demands that I sever and relationship between its allegory and my personal experience/interpretation (the hilarious shareholders tableau, tits onstage) that I entered into a trance of gory delight at it all— my brain turned off and just lol’d at the boobs and butts and blood.

What was that sync on the bloodbath scene? Some kind of speed metal thing? It was so good. I read the credits and saw Anna Von Hausswolff had a track in there, yay Anna!

oh was that anna?!!!! i was losing my goddamn mind at that point

i agree, everything about it is hyperreal, from the Netflixy patina of the apartment to the American Apparel-ness of the studio. Nothing feels quite right in this world

it is sooo funny that the talk show is called “the show” and the network is called “the network”

Ahhh it was “Ugly And Vengeful” from Dead Magic. Brilliant sync, brilliant score too

i died in this movie

the french cooking segment was almost too much for me to handle

my gay demi moore loving soul was fluttering on the precipice of extinction

it is sooo funny that the talk show is called “the show” and the network is called “the network”

― ivy., Tuesday, September 24, 2024 7:59 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

lol 🙂

Wisdom

A genuine problem with Megalopolis is that the primary antagonist is a corrupt and weird mayor of New York who, despite Coppola's best efforts, is not nearly as corrupt or weird as our real mayor Eric Adams.

— Zach Schonfeld (@zzzzaaaacccchhh) September 24, 2024

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

Saw this last week and a few thoughts need to be put down, adding spoiler tags but this thread is no place to be if you are not wanting spoilers.

Saw this in a theatre full of squeamish normies, totally the best way to see it.

Was everything after the traffic accident meant to be a dream, as the lack of physical damage after the crash and flashbacks to the motorcycle hitting her made me wonder if this was all going on at the point of her dying and trying to find a way to 'come back' to her career/desirability, jacobs ladder style

that thought did go away, after realising this only ascribes to its own internal logic.

the visual link between the ketchup stain on the star at the beginning, and her decomposing to schmutter on the star at the end, made me wonder if this was all supposed to be our dream, and none of it actually happened, see dying dream theory above

the taped on face she attaches to MonstroElizaSue reminded me of the smell of Reeves & Mortimer, which only added to the unsettlingness of the last 20 mins