‘The Substance’ Review: Demi Moore Delivers an Utterly Fearless Performance in Coralie Fargeat’s Gnarly Examination of How We See Ourselves | Cannes

Admit it. Who of us haven’t stared in the mirror or at old photos of our younger selves and longed to go back to the days when we felt the most desirable, sexy and confident? That’s what Coralie Fargeat is exploring in her unflinching new sci-fi horror film The Substance.

The fear of aging, loneliness and irrelevance are universal parts of being human. But when you’re a woman working in the entertainment industry, those issues are magnified tenfold. 

In Fargeat’s first film since she exploded onto the scene in 2017 with her bloody thriller Revenge, she’s now taking shots at the Hollywood machine, celebrity culture and the unrealistic beauty standards women are expected to uphold to remain employed. 

In today’s youth-obsessed culture, women of a certain age are expected to starve, enhance and inject themselves to stay in the game. But when diet, exercise and even a past Oscar win aren’t enough anymore for our protagonist Elizabeth Sparkles (Demi Moore in one of her finest roles) she resorts to some extreme alternative anti-ageing methods.

The film opens with a time-lapse sequence of Elizabeths’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame literally fading as both she and time march forward. In no industry is it more of a crime to age than in show business. Since hitting the age of 50, acting roles have dried up for Elizabeth but she’s made a modest post-movie career as a celebrity fitness instructor. 

Demi Moore’s own career is not unlike that of Elizabeth’s. Moore had breakthrough success as part of the Brat Pack in the 80s and in the 90s starred in huge hits like Ghost, A Few Good Men and G.I. Jane, the latter of which was geared to being an Oscar-worthy turn that instead cruelly earned her a Worst Actress Razzie win. But after a certain point she started showing up in fewer high profile projects – she all but disappeared, making her an inspired choice for the part. Couched within the gore you can find a fitting allegory about the predatory nature of Hollywood itself. It’s not hard to imagine that Moore’s more vulnerable moments as Elizabeth were being drawn from her own experiences in the business. Moore was, after all, at the peak of her career when abuse of female talent was at its most rampant in Hollywood while everyone around it was at their most quiet. 

Dennis Quaid plays Elizabeth’s callous manager Harvey (an obvious nod to convicted predator Harvey Weinstein). When he fires Elizabeth in favour of finding some fresh new blood to take over her show, Elizabeth reaches rock bottom. 

This leads her to a shady underground organisation that offers a revolutionary new procedure known as The Substance. A luminescent green liquid which once injected causes the user’s body to undergo a mitosis-like mutation that divides their molecular structure into two separate bodies. The new body is “a better version of yourself” that is younger, prettier and more perfect. In this case, the “better” version of Elizabeth is a vivacious Marget Qualley  who brands herself as Sue and uses her regenerated sex appeal to acquire Elizabeth’s former televised dance instructor job and live a life of youthful carefree bliss. All the while, the older body of Elizabeth lies semi-conscious on her bathroom floor hooked up to a tube of liquid food. There may be two of them but they are one in the same. One can’t survive without the other however, only one of them can exist out-and-about at a time. 

Like with any beauty regimen there are maintenance rituals and instructions they must follow. Sue must inject herself daily with stabiliser shots of Elizabeth’s spinal fluid and they have to swap back every seven days or it will have drastic consequences for them both.

The fading star yearning for the youth and beauty of her glory years is something we’ve seen explored in many beloved films like All About Eve, Sunset Boulevard and Death Becomes Her. But we’ve never seen the subject tackled with such freewheeling insanity as we have in Fargeat’s The Substance.

Last night the film was met with rapturous applause when it had its debut screening at the Cannes Film Festival. It received a 13-minute standing ovation (the longest of any film in this year’s lineup so far), which is wild when you consider Cannes audiences have been unforgiving with other provocative and gross out films of the past.

Back in 2016, Nicholas Winding Refn’s The Neon Demon was met with booing crowds in Cannes. Even though it was another LA-based horror with a similar story of an aspiring young model skyrocketing to the top only to have other jealous models want to literally consume her beauty and innocence to sustain their own careers. But the shock-value in The Neon Demon is quite frankly tame comparatively to what we witness in The Substance. 

Cannes’ embrace of this film could be indicative of a shift in societal attitudes towards these impossible beauty standards that we’re all saturated in and that none of us can live up to. Yes, it is a deliriously entertaining squirm-along horror and nothing about its message could be described as “subtle.” But the opportunities for personal resonance are abundant throughout. Its thematic content may be superficial on the surface, but if you look beneath the veneer of the characters’ obsession with their own vanity, you’ll find there actually is a lot of, well, substance – and yes pun very much intended.

The character of Elizabeth is a tragic figure of her own undoing. Despite her success and fame she still places far too much of her self-worth on her appearance. Demi Moore delivers an utterly fearless performance here as Elizabeth. 

One of her most effective scenes is her getting ready to go on a date. She looks in the mirror, puts on some simple makeup but before she can get out the door, she catches an image of the gorgeous Sue plastered over a billboard, which causes her to spiral. She goes back to the mirror multiple times, adding more makeup and scarves to hide wrinkles and her natural imperfections. It’s harrowing to watch Elizabeth’s insecurities bubbling up to the surface. But the real tragedy of the scene is that she looked beautiful to begin with – she just couldn’t see it herself. 

Anyone with eyeballs can see that even in her sixties Demi Moore is an obviously conventionally attractive woman. But as with the character of Elizabeth, deep within us all is that little voice that says I’m not attractive or good enough or that I hate myself. As Elizabeth’s hatred for her younger sexier self Sue escalates, the message truly sinks in that we can all stand to be a little kinder to ourselves. 

Fargeat’s direction also brilliantly emphasises the isolation that Elizabeth experiences. We often see her from behind walking through surreal windowless corridors unable to be viewed by the outside world. Even her apartment is a reflection of her state of mind thanks to excellent subliminal production design from Stanislas Reydellet. It might be spacious but like Elizabeth, it’s empty inside. 

Margret Qualley is fast becoming one of her generation’s most exciting performers to watch out for. Her roles here, Sanctuary and in Yorgos Lanthimos’ most recent outings Poor Things and Kinds of Kindness illustrate that she is completely unafraid to throw herself into the most weird and challenging of movies. 

As a director, Coralie Fargeat wears her horror influences on her sleeve. Observant fans of the genre will find homages to beloved films like The Shining, Carrie, The Thing among others throughout. But one of her most prominent influences is David Cronenberg’s The Fly which is hinted early on when Elizabeth stares at a fly drowning in a glass of wine. 

Much like Jeff Goldblum in The Fly, so too does Elizabeth undergo physical repercussions for her and Sue’s actions. This is where immense credit needs to be given to the Makeup and Hair team who have pulled off some of the most jaw-dropping and groan-inducing makeup that cinema has seen in recent memory. While VFX were required for some of the most bizarre moments, audiences are going to be blown away by the level of ambitious practical makeup that is on display here. 

While the Academy is unlikely to champion a film like this there is a strong chance The Substance could end up collecting the top prize at Cannes this year; The Palme d’Or. In recent years the juries have gravitated towards the most crowd pleasing films in the lineup such as Parasite, Triangle of Sadness and last year’s Anatomy of a Fall. But the most apt comparison would have to be Julia Ducornau’s equally outrageous Titane which won in 2021. It’s not far-fetched to think that a jury led by Barbie-hitmaker Greta Gerwig might champion a female-directed film about the unrealistic sociological expectations put on women. Cue “the impossible to be a woman clip” from Barbie.

Some may take issue with its heavy-handed messaging but this film isn’t shooting for subtlety. Everything about it is intentionally overt for maximum entertainment. Whether it’s the visceral sound design of Dennis Quaid eating shrimp, the throbbing score by Raffertie or the sexified cinematography of Benjamin Kracun – everything is executed with tenacious flair that’s designed to grab your attention – even if editors Jerome Eltabet, Valentin Féron and Fargeat herself could have use a snip here and there. It’s why it’s easy to forgive the slightly long runtime because you’re having far too much fun watching the chaos unfold and the final shot of the film is a very satisfying full circle moment.

The Substance is not only the best of this year’s Cannes Film Festival, it’s also an instant transformational horror classic that demands to be watched with a crowd.

Grade A-

This review is from the 2024 Cannes Film Festival where The Substance premiered in Competition. MUBI will release the film theatrically in the U.S.