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In "The Substance," Demi Moore plays, essentially, herself as the character Elizabeth Sparkle, an aging Hollywood sex symbol who also incorporates aspects of Jane Fonda, as in her latter years she is most famous for her TV aerobic workout routines. As is all too common, Sparkle is fired by her sleazebag producer Harvey (Dennis Quaid) for being too old and "unattractive," and she turns to increasingly extreme cosmetic procedures as she desperately tries to maintain her relevance - which, in patriarchy generally and in Hollywood especially, is synonymous with youth.
While filtered through the genres of sci-fi and horror, the metaphors are not subtle; indeed, Fargeat (who also wrote and produced the film) literally shoves her ideas, themes, and emotions in your face through the copious use of extreme close-ups. When she wants you to understand how disgusting the predator Harvey is (no last name given, but none needed to understand her point), she forces us to watch him sloppily devour prawns with grasping hands and an open mouth. When she wants us to comprehend just how sexy and desirable Sparkle's youthful alter-ego Sue (Margaret Qualley) is, her soft-filter camera lingers on Sue's ass and tits and crotch to an extent that exposes the male gaze as the absurd farce that it is.
And, critically, she contrasts these leering shots of Sue with the kind, naturalistic depiction of Sparkle. We see all of Demi Moore in this movie, and as a bi person I feel qualified to say she can still get it, holy shit. That is, ultimately, the tragedy of the movie. Here is a woman who by any reasonable standard is still incredibly attractive; her only "sin" is being older than thirty. (Moore was about 60 when this movie was filmed - a full decade older than her "too old" character, an irony I'm sure she and Fargeat were fully aware of.) But because of the misogyny that pervades the industry, this objectively beautiful woman feels compelled to destroy herself for the sake of pursuing youth, beauty, and relevance. She does so even when she knows it's destroying her, and the sense of alienation between "low" Elizabeth and "high" Sue also evokes the horrors of drug addition that are unfortunately common in showbiz, for reasons that are connected to the obsession with youth. Drugs make you feel energetic and invincible - just like we did when we were young.
I should say that for all the praise I am heaping on this movie, it still annoyed me, to the point that even halfway through I wasn't sure if I actually liked it. There is a difference between charming bluntness and condescension, and the movie seesawed between the two. When the movie suddenly turns into a synthwave music video to ogle Sue's body, I cackled with laughter at the absurdity; when the movie repeatedly flashed back to scenes and lines of dialogue that had happened mere minutes earlier as if it didn't trust me to remember the plot of the movie I'm actively watching, I groaned with frustration. Maybe those flashbacks were also supposed to be so-stupid-it's-camp; however, thanks to Netflix's "second screen" mandate, it's the SOP of all major productions these days, and frankly it insulted my intelligence. When we encounter the aged version of a previously-introduced RN, we don't need a close-up on his birthmark AND a flashback to the RN's birthmark AND the reveal that the aged version has the same Substance accoutrements as Elizabeth AND the aged version saying explicitly, "Yeah my youthful version recruited you," overlaid with a flashback to that very scene with the RN earlier in the movie. Like Jesus Christ, how stupid do they think we are? WE GET IT.
However, the climax of the movie ultimately won me over with its sheer audacity. I was not viscerally affected by most of the movie up to that point, but the nightmarish horror that Sue faced on New Year's Eve - when even the young, pert, sexy woman is hit with the realization that she still isn't good enough - had me covering my face and squirming in discomfort. And then, when the movie turned into a straight up GWAR music video, I was hooting and hollering with glee. The catharsis that the movie gives when it condemns the movie industry - and society at large - with the blood on its hands is like nothing else. It's horrible, it's beautiful, it's disgusting, it's amazing. Fargeat takes a sledgehammer to the whole system and, Gallagher-style, turns it into a red, pulpy, hilarious mess.
