MIRROR, MIRROR ON THE WALL…
Thanks to The Substance, the term “body horror” as a film subgenre –if such a thing can be considered– was added to the unknown vocabulary of the recent attendees to a film festival. On the other side, Parisian Coralie Fargeat, who has already worked within other subgenres and captured attention with a “rape & revenge” film aptly titled Revenge, and her new film vaguely allows us an orientation of where her profile as a director is leading towards. Something similar to what happened with talents such as Richard Kelly, David Robert Mitchell or the –thankfully– forgotten Ducournau, directors whom the festivals claim as their own discoveries to later, if they did not keep in line, throw them away. The early claim to talent many times ends up being detrimental for a filmmaker. These three directors used the same formula in their productions, which is to include within their plots fantastic elements of which little is known about its origins but plenty about its rules. In The Box a button was given, which upon pressing it, provoked an unknown person to die and would give the pusher a sum for such an action. In It Follows to have sexual intercourse with the “infected” would provoke “something” to chase him to death until the “curse” is transferred to someone else; just like with the videocassette and its copy in Ringu. In The Substance, the matter has more to do with the physical alteration through a commercial liquid product which, upon injection, provokes the person to split in two halves: a matrix and a sort of clone, much younger than the one who performed the injection. In this way, two persons come out that are the same at the same time, and so it is established the desire of remaining young as in The Portrait of Dorian Gray as well as making an analogy with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
In this way, in The Substance, Demi Moore, who portrays Elizabeth Sparkle, makes a huge choice in order to retake her acting career; a sort of Jane Fonda in a Work-Out TV show. Dennis Quaid is Harvey, an indistinct and grotesque boss that brings to mind the horrific portrayal by Mark Ruffalo in the recently released Poor Things. The response to the treatment which Sparkle exposes herself to is the creation of Sue (Margaret Qualley), extracted from her body but way youthful and with a temper or voracity for unbridled success regarding the choice taken by Sparkle. That is how Sue replaces Sparkle and not only in the TV show but also seizing control of Sparkle’s life, who becomes a cocoon or host from which Sue will feed on.
As with every horror film, the inciting incident is generated when rules are not complied, just like with Gizmo, whom is supposed not to be fed or get wet after midnight, hence leading to chaos. A chaos laid out in such a way that the plot turns upside down everything that happened up to that point. It is there where the film begins to acquire all the features of the mentioned subgenre, updated with mutilations, explicit graphic violence, secretions, vomiting, etc. and all to the beat of synthwave music. The references to Carpenter, Cronenberg and De Palma’s Carrie are everywhere to be found.
The Substance makes an impact. It is not a film easy to digest and has a rhythm that does not allow time to stand up or assimilating an impact on screen, which after a second is followed by another ready to deliver a blow.
Director, Screenwriter: Coralie Fargeat. Cast: Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid, Hugo Diego García. Producers: Tim Bevan, Coralie Fargeat, Eric Fellner. Runtime: 140 minutos.
