The Substance is funny, it’s scary, it’s vulgar, and it’s a film that can only be described as living up to Hollywood’s idea of madness. At its core, the film takes a shot at the entirety of Hollywood’s practice of worshiping both youth and beauty by presenting audiences with a modernized version of The Picture of Dorian Gray. It has to be said though that the film slightly falls off the wagon towards its later parts and gets a little intrusive in its attempts at revolting the masses, but that does not take away from the pure enjoyment that this movie is, and I would argue that this film is exciting enough to compete at the same level with Poor Things!. The director/writer Coralie Fargeat should be praised for the brutalism she depicts in this film, as it seems she earned her rotoscope manga and savior dark sea imagery for precisely this purpose.
The Substance is weird at the run, it is almost better suited to be described as broken. Perhaps the best way to describe it would be alluding to some of its more violent depictions of Hamlet, as the first counter-intuitive part with it is the decades-long depiction of Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) as a superstar in the A list. That said, the best twist this movie was able to pull off was not portraying Elisabeth Sparkle using de-aging technology or showing arbitrary old photographs instead having a detailed outline on how spiderwebs start forming while she gives out not even an inch of focus onto losing her followers or the fans. For all that has been said, surely everything that gets unfolded through the film has a deeper meaning, along with everything else within the movie. Fargeat wants her audience to be entertained, and she has a statement in her mind.
In light of her growing experience, Elisabeth is abruptly fired from a broad audience television network solely by the studio manager Harvey (Dennis Quaid) an insensitive primitive who has no surname (which is quite unusual). Harvey states that she is too wrinkled for the audience’s attention. What he desires is that woman who would be not older than twenty-six and would be able to draw the target audience of eighteen to thirty-four year age span. And Elisabeth is not that woman. Because of the anger that arose after being fired, she got in touch with a suspicious company that promised to sell black-market drugs which the company called The Substance. This was the last time the world saw Elisabeth as she went through an excruciating and torturous birth process of a strange creature that felt like it came out of an alien movie. Margaret Qualley together with abominable birth processes became a star on screen, establishing fame for herself. Here the role of Elisabeth as Sue was fully acted out as she acquired all of Harvey’s determination. Not long after that Sue was able to get the New Elisabeth role of Robert Vanderbilt who was able to replace his new job with his old one. Sounds convincing right? It was everything but. But before proceeding, what needs mentioning is that their bond was parasitic. That rough side of their life was lived one at a time, as living them was ruled out. What fueled the animosity was There tough times together as the latter of the two women began displaying strength and power from the get-go.
The Substance is a film of strong visual imagery. At the start of the movie, there is a distinction made between the bright and cheerful world of Sue and the rather dull and grey area in which Elisabeth lives. The gory and unpleasant interior scenes are set in a harshly lit white bathroom that starkly juxtaposes with the red stain of blood. Later in the film, however, there’s an over-the-top sequence where it embarrassingly make one asks, “Where’s the fire hose?” because everything appears red. Being all the guts in the film, Is the depiction of the oral surgeon’s hands manually doing the teeth extraction the worst? The peeling of a fingernail? Of Dennis freakish Quaid tackling a plate of gigantic prawns? You can choose.
You can see both Moore and Qualley naked in this film. This is the case even in earlier scenes although that is altered by the use of prosthesis in later clips. Fargeat adopts a strange practical and unemotional stance, and thus, the nudity never occurs during the act. (Sex in The Substance happens mostly off-screen.) The nudity in the film is non-sexual or suggestive in any way; there is a reason for every action the director undertakes and the actresses are fully supportive of it.
The Substance has an interesting way of dealing with its themes as it employs horror and dark comedy almost through a scalpel. This is not the type of feature film that makes people laugh out clearly, although this is not to say that there are a couple of instances during this feature where loud laughter is dominant. However, do not expect to hear too many uncontrollable laughs, just some sarcasm, and mumbles with some grins. There may be walk-outs, but honestly the blood and guts are all played up so it is hard to think people would really be turned off by them. As already stated, the Dennis Quaid-eating-shrimp scene is perhaps the only thing in the film that is more disgusting than the incidents in the hardcore monster movie parody.
At 141 minutes, The Substance goes on a bit too long. There are instances, more times than late in the proceedings, where it appears to be going through the same cycle over and over again, or just going in circles. The upside is that there are fond memories of tonal hiccups. Such issues are relatively inconsequential, and the brilliant portrayal by Moore and Qualley goes a long way to ensure that the viewer ignores them. Fargeat has given what is in most cases absent in the cinema today courage and a willingness to be true to a single perspective. This is alien filmmaking that draws attention to itself under its disparity with the run-of-the-mill movies screening next door but at the same time never loses the ability to pleasantly receive those who step into this strange realm.
To Watch More Movies Like The Substance (2024) Visit Soap2day.
