Fleapit revisited:The Substance.

"Pretty girls should always smile" - Harvey

Imagine absolutely hating somebody, but also needing them so much that you simply couldn't live without them. Then imagine that person that you both hate and need is yourself. Yet also another person at the same time. That the two cannot exist without the one and that the one cannot exist without the two.

French director Coralie Fargeat's new film The Substance is absolutely fucking bonkers. It's brilliant, it's hugely audacious, it's bitingly satirical, it's gory, it's violent, and, at times, it's even funny. But it's also as a mad as a box of frogs, as mad as a Kemi Badenoch press conference. Though, unlike the latter, it's got a strong, and addictive, narrative arc and an inner logic.

That inner logic is pushed to ridiculous extremes in a film that seems to me to be inspired by many other fantastic directors (Dario Argento, the Peter Jackson of Braindead and Bad Taste, Spike Jonze, Charlie Kaufman - in its vision of modernity and futuristic invention not quite working in the way they're supposed to, and, most of all, David Cronenberg's body horror) but, like Yorgos Lanthimos' Poor Things earlier this year, is resolutely its own thing. I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like it.

Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) is a fading Hollywood star. Literally judging by her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She's now fifty years old (Moore is playing a character more than a decade younger than her real age and pulls it off easily, she looks amazing - in more ways than you mighgt expect) and hosting a popular aerobics show.

 

When she overhears her producer, Randy - a Willy Wonka clone who looks like he belongs on some kind of sex offender's register (Dennis Quaid), talk about replacing her with a younger woman and then witnesses her poster being torn down as she drives through L.A., she's so overcome she has a pretty nasty car crash. She's not hurt but just before being released a male nurse (Robin Greer) passes her the details of something called The Substance which promises to deliver a younger, more beautiful, more perfect version of one's self.

Elisabeth, eventually, decides to give it a go and, guess what?, it creates more problems than it solves. The kit (consisting of scissors, syringes, strangely coloured liquids, and food bags), as promised, provides a younger, more beautiful, more perfect version of Elisabeth. Sue (Margaret Qualley) - who arrives in a scene reminiscent of both Alien and An American Werewolf In London - but gorier. Sue soon finds herself taking Elisabeth's job and much of her life.

The shady organisation that control The Substance give Elisabeth/Sue strict rules on how it should be used but it's not long before those rules are being flaunted, abused, and ignored and that proves to be unwise for all concerned. What begins as a biting satire ramps up into a full on gorefest yet retains its sardonic edge right up until the very last scene.

The men in The Substance are all either lecherous, exploitative, noisy eaters, or stupid (Elisabeth/Sue's neighbour, Oliver (Gore Abrams), may as well have bulging eyeballs and a drooling tongue hanging out) and in a verite drama this would be disappointingly one note. But this is satire and both men and women are in Forgeat's line of fire.

The film makes great points about vanity, about how ageing is obviously far tougher on women than it is on men (for all the advances made in recent years, women are still judged on looks more than men - and men more on status than women), and how the entertainment business can be shallow and cruel. While being a wonderful piece of entertainment in itself. During a few scenes, the particularly squeamish ones, I had to watch through my fingers but, despite that, I couldn't look away from the screen for one moment. A wonderful and peculiar piece of film making although I won't be signing for the process any time soon. Better to grow old with dignity than fight an unwinnable battle against time.