Youth is wasted on the young in The Substance, writer/director Coralie Fargeat’s long, exciting and technically brilliant sci-fi fable swaggering like a 1980s action movie.
Demi Moore plays Judith Sparkle, the ageing actress who takes “the substance” after being nudged in the direction of the age-reversing serum by a doctor with too-blue eyes, too-tight skin and too-perfect hair. With a wave of a magic syringe she has soon budded, allowing a younger version of herself (played by Margaret Qualley) to go out and play in Hollywood, leaving the aged and inert husk back at the ranch.
The wrinkle is that it’s a week on, a week off. Every seven days Young Judith has to hand the baton back to Old Judith, or else.
And it’s “or else” that Forgeat serves up. Increasingly resenting having to pause her breathlessly exciting life, Young Judith starts “borrowing” time from her alter ego. The results are The Picture of Dorian Grey teched-up and yukked-up quite a bit.
Fargeat’s film-making style was already evident in her last film, Revenge, a Hollywood calling card if there ever was one, and it’s even more amplified here. It’s a style usually associated with male directors – there are eye-catching edits and action set pieces, whipcrack cutaways, caricatured characters, plenty of noise, frequent odd angles, explosions and plenty of swearing. It’s visually potent, big-bollocked stuff. Shades of Guy Ritchie in all the technical pizzazz, but Fargeat also has Kubrick’s cool clinical eye down pat, and there are some moments of gruesome body horror that are pure David Cronenberg.
Expect nudity, then, with Moore and Qualley both in the buff for good chunks of the movie, with a bit of CG assist to help the pair of them more closely resemble each other. Moore looks pretty good for someone in her 60s, though we’re probably never getting a really unvarnished look at her or Qualley.
Fargeat deliberately and probably semi-ironically gives us plenty of “male gaze” lingers, especially once Young Judith has been installed as the bright new face of the hot fitness show at the studio run by Dennis Quaid’s lecherous old exec, Harvey (ho ho). I’m betting Fargeat watched that old video for the Eric Prydz song Call On Me a few times – girls in tight clothes in the gym bending over a lot – the male gaze in concentrated form.
In Fargeat’s telling, there really is nothing better than being young, rich and sexy. Looking at Qualley in her leotard, it’s an easy lesson to learn.
Fargeat and Moore even manage to make us feel sorry for Old Judith, who once also had it all, and still now has a lot more than most.
Read it as a fantasy about Gen Z getting payback on the boomers, the generation who stole their lunch and who, thanks to reversing life-expectancy statistics, also seemingly just will not die. Or read it more simply as a metaphor for drugs – they only make it worse, etc. Or more simply still as an almost medieval memento mori – all life is grass, enjoy it while you have it.
So, yes, it’s great but it is also way too long, way way too long. As a tight-90 high-concept B movie it’d be a lot better, but a 160-minute movie that’s said most of what it has to say by the mid point and then carries on as if getting to the 160-minute mark were written into the contract, what is that all about?
Fargeat’s Revenge was also too long, so maybe it’s just the way she rolls. Taking the rough with the smooth, the film is worth the ride.
The Substance – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2024
