Coralie Fargeat, the French filmmaker behind the cult-favourite Revenge (2017), is back to unsettle and provoke with The Substance, streaming on MUBI India. Known for her gory, thrill-filled style, Fargeat veers into surreal, body-horror comedy with this latest offering, a darkly comical, often grotesque, parable that takes no prisoners in its commentary on ageing, beauty, and women’s visibility in media.
While The Substance is overlong, it’s also absurdly entertaining. With Demi Moore in the lead as Elisabeth Sparkle, a fallen Hollywood icon, the film’s self-aware trashiness feels like a love letter to VHS-era gorefests and Roger Corman’s campy genre classics.
Elisabeth Sparkle, once a Hollywood A-lister, now finds herself pigeonholed in the nostalgic world of home fitness shows. Sporting brightly-coloured leotards and leg warmers, Elisabeth struts her way through each broadcast, bearing a carefully crafted, upbeat image that is at odds with her inner turmoil. Yet, just as she’s adjusting to this new chapter, Elisabeth stumbles upon a brutal truth: Harvey, the loathsome executive at the network she works for (played in cartoonish, exaggerated fashion by Dennis Quaid), is planning to terminate her contract.
What follows is the film’s core conceit — a secret, horrifyingly plausible ‘procedure’ that allows Elisabeth to regain her youth, not by mere cosmetic tweaks but through the creation of a younger, idealised version of herself, whom she names Sue (played with heartbreaking vulnerability by Margaret Qualley). The procedure creates a symbiotic link between the two bodies: every seven days, Elisabeth must shift her consciousness between them without fail.
Sue is everything Elisabeth once was: beautiful, youthful, and brimming with charm. Yet, she is also the ultimate simulacrum, a walking reminder of Elisabeth’s now-elusive past self. Here, Fargeat introduces one of the film’s most interesting satirical elements — the creation and exploitation of women’s self-image within media, juxtaposed with the horror of being forced to relinquish it as the years pile on.
At first, Elisabeth and Sue coexist in a twisted harmony, trading weeks to satisfy Elisabeth’s professional obligations while Sue effortlessly slips into her old life, outshining her in every way. But Sue’s role isn’t limited to simply being Elisabeth’s avatar. Her presence also stokes Elisabeth’s deepest insecurities. Every other week, as Elisabeth reclaims her life, she’s faced with the haunting reality of her replacement, a literal embodiment of the youth-obsessed culture that spurned her. It’s a metaphor that Fargeat wields with glee, pushing each character to their limits until the mounting tension becomes almost unbearable.
The body horror kicks into high gear when Sue’s perfection begins to fray. As the process goes awry, Sue’s eerie flawlessness becomes nightmarish, culminating in a series of grotesque transformations that evoke the squirm-inducing intensity of David Cronenberg’s The Fly. Fargeat punctuates these moments with flashes of macabre humour. The film’s gruesome body politics brings to mind Julia Ducournau’s Titane (2021).
Yet, for all its ingenuity, The Substance isn’t without its flaws. At nearly two hours, the film suffers from a bloated third act, dragging out Elisabeth and Sue’s showdown in ways that feel redundant. Still, Moore’s performance is a masterclass in dark comedy, as she leans fully into Elisabeth’s predicament with a mixture of horror, irony and bemusement.
Ultimately, The Substance revels in its own trashiness, paying homage to the lurid pulp horrors of the 80s that dared to be both ugly and unapologetically entertaining. Fargeat’s film is all about showing just how hollow and dangerous the pursuit of beauty and relevance can be.
