The Substance

[SocksAndTheCity]

I saw this a few weeks ago at a festival but it's out on general release today and I'll be going again on Monday - I thought it was terrific, if a bit long. Has anybody else been for a look? It's pretty squishy and definitely not for everyone.

Demi Moore is just stunning (as is Margaret Qualley), Dennis Quaid is absolutely grotesque and the end is mental 🤣

Just back from seeing this. Um - bit lost for words after that finale! The bloke next to me was pissing himself laughing.

I enjoyed most of it, very interesting idea. Waaay too many bum shots and they must have blown the fake blood and guts budget! Absolutely barking.

I think this is a fantastic film and for me demonstrates why we need more films by women film makers. I loved the rage in it. It was so clever and very funny in parts. I kind of feel that this is the kind of filmmaker that Emerald Fennell aspires to be but doesn't quite get there because it takes incredible courage to go as far as this filmmaker (have forgotten her name).

The Film prompted me to watch Cronenberg's The Fly again as it is an obvious influence (amongst many other films). The Fly is also recommended - especially for the youngsters who may have never seen it.

I saw this today and really liked it - Demi was great. It lost the plot a bit at the end though - it made me laugh (not sure if that was the intention?!)

I loved it.

I laughed at the end. I think I would have found it too much if it didn't have that laughable grotesque end. You can cope with it because it's a bit silly ( if that makes sense).

I really liked Demi in it. I don't usually like her at all, her roles are always too serious, dull, one dimensional. This was something out of her usual type cast and because of that you really notice it.

A little bit contradictory when you consider the point the film makes and the amount of cosmetic surgery Demi has had. I was able to forget about that though and was totally absorbed throughout.

I think it was @CheeseAndPineappleHedgehog - everybody at the screening I saw was having a great time from what I could see (and Coralie Fargeat is the director @VictoriaSpungecake ) 😀

The awards bodies don't like horror films and I suspect body horror even less (plus Steve McQueen's new film premieres at LFF in a couple of weeks so that'll take care of a good few Oscars), but I'd love to see some recognition for this. I thought the visual effects and especially the sound design were exceptional.

Most relatable moment: Demi/Elizabeth getting ready to go on a date with completely unremarkable bloke who obviously thinks she's a goddess. I won't spoil it, but I've done almost exactly that and it was awful.

I think that was almost part of the point @Tittat50 ; no matter what a woman does/spends or how stunning she is or how well she looks after herself, the industry will ditch her regardless.

I'm not sure it would have worked as well with a more ordinary or natural looking lead and I thought it was clever for that (just my interpretation, anyway ).

@SocksAndTheCity yes, that's a really good point. It did make me think about her relationship with Kutcher and how no matter what she did and how great she always looks for her age, youth would always win ( Kunis).

The above was running through my mind when watching the film - if I look at that, then she actually is perfect for this performance and the statement it makes.

I’d seen the trailer but hadn’t read or heard anything else about it so thought it would be more cerebral, not body horror. But I did really enjoy it. I think it switched from fairly serious to horror brilliantly.
@SocksAndTheCity i completely agree about the date part. It was heartbreaking.
The only negative part I felt was the camera angles during Sue’s TV shows. If Fargeat was making a point about age and beauty why did we need prolonged shots of bum and inner thighs. I thought that could have been done in a more subtle way but I wonder if I’m just overthinking it.

Just saw this and loved it. Although perhaps love is not the right word considering I watched the last quarter through my fingers. What a ride!

I quite liked all the gratuitous bum shots. Subverting the idea of the male gaze and all that.

Totally agree that this is why we need more films by females (and finally a female centred film with a feminist spirit not written and directed by a man! (I'm looking at you Poor Things))

I saw it again last night (and it was better still for not being the fifth film I'd seen that day); there were a lot of women in the audience and we all laughed at the funny bits

My take on the way Sue's fitness show was filmed is that the makers no longer felt the need to even pretend it was about fitness once Elizabeth was gone, and could just get straight on with what they wanted, so the mega-sexualised pouting, bum thrusting and crotch shots in tiny leotards showed it was only about the male gaze all along. I think it was meant to be a bit uncomfortable because it makes the audience participate in it too.

There were definitely a lot of bums, but I also noticed that the end credits had an entire section for Margaret Qualley's prosthetic breasts 😁

I also liked the moment where the one night stand runs into Demi and the way he treats her compared to how he treated Sue. There were a lot of continuing strands running through the film in this respect e.g. Elisasue "It's still me! I'm still me!"

The date makeup thing was so so relatable

I thought it was so sad that she stuck a picture of her 'old' self on to go to the show. She appreciated what she'd had all along in the end but it was too late

I think that’s a good take on Sue’s shows but maybe they could’ve shown it from a different perspective. They could’ve focused on the gallery and the director’s instructors on the camera angles or on the men’s reactions to Sue’s show.

Haven't we seen enough of men's reactions to shows like Sue's, though? In so many films we see men being turned on by the female body and its gyrations. In this show the choreography parodies what is so familiar, makes it almost grotesque.

I'm going to see it this afternoon. I can't wait.

I enjoyed Elisasue putting on her earrings, straightening her hair and going back to do her show with her picture stuck on - I think she had finally accepted herself regardless of how she looked and she was at peace with it for the first time. That bathroom mirror (and the weird, spartan bathroom compared with the rest of the apartment) was another constant.

The food was interesting - not just Dennis Quaid and the shrimp, but Elizabeth using food to punish herself/Sue and then getting angry about it and it always being depicted as rich, heavy and greasy. So many women have a complicated relationship with food and I'm sure Elizabeth being on TV doing fitness will have been no exception, so her horror of the fatty food and what might do to her appearance was yet another sub theme that I didn't think of until today.

I agree @VictoriaSpungecake. I read it as deliberately repositioning the female experience as central to the film / juxtaposed against society's treatment and expectations of women or something along those lines (or something along those lines. This is not year a fully formed thought). But I think the grotesque gyrations were central to this. Focussing on men's reactions would run counter to that and just typify what goes unsaid in a lot of mainstream cinema (certainly films that don't pass the Bechdel test) - that women are only useful to cater to the male experience and it's the male perspective that matters. This film was all about the female experience

Really looking forward to seeing this. I enjoyed Moore's interview about the film in the Guardian, and the positive comments here have reminded me of my decision to make a rare trip out to an actual cinema.

Oh my god just seen it and it was bad. I mean, so bad.

I can't even.

I was embarrassed to be in the cinema with it.

If that was satire so is a whoopee cushion.

A whoopee cushion filled with blood.

Are you a young person, and "bad" for you means "fucking awesome?"

No, I'm an oldie (old enough to have loved The Fly when it came out) and I was amazed by how disappointing the substance was. I love a bit of body horror but this just didn't seem to work, in loads of ways.

Just to pick one thing that annoyed me, what was the point of the Substance if, instead of making her look younger, it just caused her to have to give away half her life to a different, younger person? I thought at first they would be one consciousness in two bodies, but they were just two different people.

It would have been better for her if some random girl scouted by Dennis Quaid had got her job. Then at least she wouldn't have had to gestate her rival.

It turned much of the film into the old sexist cliche that a desire to be beautiful makes women hate one another and incapable of solidarity. Took the pressure off the menz.

But more annoyingly it was just illogical.

But even more annoyingly, the horror was just lame, as if going over the top with blood and battery etc was all it took to create an interesting shock.

And the scene where there were lots of messy dishes and food remains in the flat? It seemed so much of a non sequitur. It wasn't till after I left the cinema that it struck me the only reason for that scene was that it pointlessly echoes the food-messy state of Jess Goldblum's flat in the Fly. That had some sort of rationale, though, because flies love sugar and all that.

And the monster at the end just looked like it was echoing the Elephant Man. All so disappointing.

@ReadWithScepticism

a desire to be beautiful makes women hate one another and incapable of solidarity.

I think that Susan (was that her name?) was part of Elisabeth. They were the same person. I know it seemed weird - a bit like Jekyll and Hyde although Jekyll transforms into Hyde doesn't he? So, Susan isn't hating on another woman. She is hating on herself. I am ashamed to say that given that S&E are the same person, I could identify with the way they treated each other. I have at times had intrusive thoughts telling me that i'm not good enough, that I am not slim enough, pretty enough etc and when I am (for example) slim those intrusive thoughts tell me how I look great.I really beat myself up. And those thoughts are supported by other people in real life who then constantly tell me how amazing/beautiful (etc) I look and, by implication, that it mattered that I didn't look good when I was obese. If I re-gain weight the compliments stop.

I have recently been experiencing this doubleness because I have recently lost weight. I am amazed by how some men treat me so well when they were indifferent to me just a few months ago. I wish I was joking. The man in the convenience store is all sweetness and light to me now when he used to be quite dismissive. And he's not the only one. I have actually been shouted at by people when I was obese - even my sister felt she could do that and treat me like shit. It's weird.

There was a lack of logic to it, but then The Fly wasn't scientific or logical either. Neither is Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde or Dracula* The genre allows for that.

*Not body horror, or is it?

Also, @ReadWithScepticism I think the film deliberately references The Elephant Man and many other films about bodies. I loved it for doing that too.

Well from the sound of it you're about my age @ReadWithScepticism , and whilst I can understand anybody not enjoying The Substance I can't agree that it was bad or poorly made; I thought the performances, direction and visuals/sound design in particular were excellent. If you're looking for logic though, a sci fi/body horror maybe isn't the best place 😁

I did wonder about the separate consciousness element, but I think it made sense in the context although it could have been done either way round and this worked for me - Elizabeth/Sue were two 'versions' of the same person and I thought it was clear they weren't clones. I also liked the Elephant Man/Freaks/Thing references (plus Jeff Goldblum's Fly, itself a remake), but I know other people prefer not to see anything so obviously derivative.

But you'd need to pay me to sit through Oppenheimer and unlike most I thought All Of Us Strangers was trite, mawkish crap - everybody's different

Yeah, I did wonder whether the film was trying to make points about the 'doubling' of a single person, and the internal conflicts we battle with. But I guess I just didn't buy it. In Jekyll and Hyde, you really do get a clear sense of how each one is created by characteristics of the other, and how they dovetail into eachother. But I just didn't see that in The Substance I guess. Partly because the film deliberately subtracted any personality whatsoever from the primary person. She had no life, no friends, no real personhood at all, and a flat that was as expressive of identity as a hotel lobby.

So it was hard to see the collection of soft porn tropes birthed by her as in any sense reflecting part of what she was. Hyde is Jekyll's repressed desires. Is the Substance trying to say that an older professional woman cheated by sexism has a repressed desire to perform the sickly little-girl-sugar-daddy persona that she birthed? That deep down we are all prepared to sacrifice life as a real woman in order to become the objectification of the male gaze?

I did like the gestation scene, and the nicely slashed and stitched back.