Who Can Handle the Substance?
The release of Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance coincided with our indie cinema’s busy season. I began to notice more customers than usual were walking out of screenings, returning to the bar for another pint (often paired with a deep breath and something along the lines of “what the f*** is that”) or leaving the building completely. These occurrences, alongside the news of a customer passing out in the cinema days before I planned to watch the film myself, had me anticipating the worst. When I finally went to watch The Substance, 20 minutes in my fear of the worst came true as my friend passed out. I couldn’t believe it, and neither could they as their body locked in at the grotesque image of Elisabeth Sparkle’s “better version” Sue sewing her older body shut. We left immediately and so the remainder of the film would continue to exist as a mystery to me for another week. My friend’s very physical reaction to the film was a mild seizure (the first they had ever had). Following this, another customer passed out watching The Substance when I went back to work that week. What was in this movie that had so many people reacting so physically?!
When I finally watched the full run of The Substance, I wasn’t as shocked as I feared I would be. 
Mubi
Don’t get me wrong, the film had me feeling sick, squinting, wincing in my seat… but I also laughed way more than I expected. I had been so focused on surviving the visceral body-horror images, I forgot that the extreme of separating pupils and necrotic limbs was all in aid of Coralie Fargeat’s message in expressing emotional turmoil through the extending of the body. These extreme moments were relieved by satirical turns that eased the depressing reality of what it means to confront self-indulgent experiences of feeling yourself fall below societies ever changing standards of beauty. The feeling of becoming washed up by the entertainment industry is not a universal experience, but the desire to be seen and adored by others is something most people deal with at some stage. How we think about ourselves in metrics, “if only I lost a few more lbs”, considering if it’s time to start collagen, in the selfies we post or more importantly the ones we don’t. In every way there are minor moments we, like Elisabeth Sparkle, face that make us question the desire to become a “better version” of ourselves.
Mubi
The Substance viscerally shows how unsustainable the pressure of this desire is in our society and how women become subject to an unknown expiration date. Anti-wrinkling creams, anti-ageing serums, vitamins, and unsustainable access to procedures that promise to keep us young forever all seem to be flooding us with no exception to slow down. Though it’s not bad to delve into self-care practices and aids to boost confidence, trends seen on platforms like TikTok’s “green juice girls”, “morning shed”, and “winter-arc” motivation can blur the lines between self-improvement or working towards embodying an image for social approval. The Substance peers into this psyche of “never enough” as Sue becomes Monstroelizasue.
Mubi
The Substance does not go into great, world-building depth into Elisabeth’s life and world beyond this turmoil. We are instead briefed to her rise and fall through the opening montage of her Hollywood star slowly desecrating over time. The pace of the film keeps us so on our toes that this is sometimes forgotten. Within all the film’s absurdity, could the wild physical reactions from audiences relate to confronting ageist beauty standards? Is that the real satire Fargeat wants her audience to take away? In the end we watch Elisabeth becoming destroyed, the extremity of who she feels forced to become makes her monster.
Will The Substance spark an appetite for age-confidence narratives in film, or could this necessary conversation be forgotten just as quickly as Elisabeth Sparkle? At the very least I hope this film incites a desire to see bold, vulnerable performances like Demi Moore’s embodiment of Elisabeth Sparkle. The images of Monstroelizasue have to remain etched in our consciousness for sometime, a reminder of the great rage (and sadness) that lives within the woman who is tired of coming against the social expectation and performative beauty.
© Warner Bros
The idea of creating alternate selves seems to be a re-emerging narrative trend. Earlier in the year this theme was controversially (in my opinion, unpleasantly) explored in Yorgos Lanthimos’ Kinds of Kindness where the paranoia of unconsensual replication of the female exists. In the film’s second chapter, it can be read as the adventurous female explorer punished by the blue collar man, literally consumed by him. These ideas seem to be following us into 2025 with Mickey 17 by director Bong Joon-Ho, due next January. It will be interesting to see how the realms of self-replication or existing as multiple selves will present itself through a male vessel, and how this perspective relates to gendered conversations in our cultural moment.