Demi Moore recently won her first Golden Globe Award for Best Female Actor in a Motion Picture (Musical or Comedy) for her performance in the controversial film The Substance.
It was a moment of surprise and shock that night (a staple of awards shows). The other nominees in her category included: Amy Adams (for Nightbitch), Cynthia Erivo (for Wicked) Karla Sophia Gascon (for Emilia Perez, Mikey Madison (for Anora) and Zendaya (for The Challengers). It was a tight category, which again, was meant to honor movie musicals or comedies.
Moore’s career, covering three decades, included some memorable performances such as Ghost (1990), A Few Good Men (1992) and G.I. Jane (1997). People-- including Demi Moore-- were starting to wonder whether her career was over.
But then came The Substance from French director, Coraline Fargeat, a bold, pull-out-the-stops sci-fi tale about an aging television star (Elisabeth) who will do anything to reclaim her youth and cling to her career as a sizzlingly-sexy, aerobic workout goddess.
She is offered an opportunity to participate in a super-secret medical program (one definitely not approved by the AMA). It involves scary trips to a graffiti-covered ghetto location, housing a sterile white locker room with a personalized package containing drugs, nutrients and a set of very strict instructions.
The sickeningly yellowish-green fluid resembles automotive anti-freeze.
Without giving away too much, Elisabeth self-administers the drugs at home in a very squeamish sequence showing a hypodermic needle puncturing her arm. The extreme close-up fills the screen and is repeated, again and again, throughout the film.
She is naked, in a huge, stark, white-tiled bathroom that reflects the style and space of her dream apartment—an environment that anyone would desperately do anything to keep.
The tricky part of the procedure is that her body generates another, more perfect and more youthful version of herself (Sue, played by Margaret Qualley) who also spends much of the movie unabashedly naked (with the help of some prosthetics).
Problems arise when the two versions of Demi’s character vie for their shared existence. The arrangement involves trading out their two, alternate selves every other week. As one might expect, vanity, jealously and greed soon enter into this schizophrenic, existential tug-of-war.
The plot of The Substance doesn’t always make sense. Perhaps, it’s not meant to. The strange story seems to largely be an excuse to serve up gratuitous scenes of nudity, blood and gore.
Regarding the bizarre theme and extensive nudity, the movie begs the question of how The Substance would have been received and accepted if it was the work of a male director, in the current world of political correctness and concerns about sexuality and sexual exploitation in the movies.
To its credit, The Substance is an artfully made film with eye-catching visuals and a pounding, throwback synth soundtrack. In many ways, it is reminiscent of edgy movies made in the Eighties.
Visually, the director borrows heavily from the work of what appear to be her filmmaking heroes. Stanley Kubrick is at the top of the list, with blatant visual references to A Clockwork Orange (1971), The Shining(1980) and Eyes Wide Shut (1999). In the event that you missed the not-so-subtle homage references, Fargeat rolls out the song Also Sprach Zarathustra (the famous opening credit music from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey). It’s shameless.
Other borrowed material include scenes from David Lynch’s The Elephant Man (1980), Brian De Palma’s Carrie (1976) and John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982), just to name a few.
The Substance isn’t big on originality. It’s not really a comedy or musical, which begs the question of how it ended up in this Golden Globe Award category. It’s not funny. Nobody sings.
What it is, is a somewhat stylish, shocking French science fiction film meant to make audiences squirm and cringe. It’s all about flash and trash and less about substance.
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