WARNING: This review contains spoilers, proceed at your own risk!
The Substance has received rave reviews, supposed walk-outs and the title of feminist film of the year. It’s a film that everyone is talking about, a vehicle to relaunch Demi Moore’s career - a fitting meta-narrative to travel alongside the film’s discussion about the place of older women in Hollywood.
And yet, it is a bad movie. As a film, ostensibly, about the ageing process and the treatment of women in media, it fails to convincingly argue one way or another. There is no celebration of age here, no retribution against the patriarchal powers that force women to hate themselves after thirty: the film feels like a piece designed to justify a hatred of old age rather than critique it. At two hours and twenty minutes, The Substance is a time warp of arse shots and failed gender politics - neither radical or interesting.
The film follows Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore), a fading celebrity fitness instructor, whose Jane Fonda knock-off morning show is cancelled. Desperate to be re-employed, she takes the titular ‘substance’, a mysterious ‘experience’ that allows her to be young for seven days, so long as she spends the following seven in her current body. This results in the literal birthing of the young and beautiful Sue (Margaret Qualley), whose only goal in life seems to be to get famous, at the expense of Elisabeth, as her misuse of the 'substance' leads Elisabeth's body to become increasingly decrepit. The film escalates to dizzyingly absurdist heights, crescendoing with a Carrie-inspired climax featuring the hybrid creature ‘Monster Elisasue’ (I wish I was joking) - the 'substance experience’ rendered a failure.
A narrative about the pressures to maintain youthfulness in Hollywood could be interesting, however, without characters with depth and intrigue, the story falls flat. Elisabeth Sparkle has an impressive celebrity track record, a beautiful home, but no friends, no family, no personal assistant or agent. This fact makes her decision to take the substance logical, sure, but her desire to be beautiful is perhaps less interesting than how she got herself in a position of having no support network in the first place. On the flip side, we know nothing about Sue (we see more of her arse than her face), except that she wants to be as famous as possible and is disgusted by the elderly. These characters are one-dimensional, defined by their bodies' adherence to social norms, and whilst the film attempts to make some points about female objectification, what it does, by leaving our protagonists vapid and soulless, is objectify them.
The Substance certainly begins with potential. The bombastic aesthetics and unbearably loud soundtrack - following the formula of recent blockbusters such as Challengers. However, without the needed insight into its protagonist's experiences of gendered oppression, the narrative fails to resolve its own barely present conceit. Unable to contrive a satisfying conclusion, the last twenty minutes or so turn to bloody absurdity, an excess of gore to compensate for a passionless display. The Substance seems unsure if it wants to give us a meaningful message, and whilst political ambiguity in a film is often insightful, this film instead leaves confusion in its wake. It's a film that cannot decide if it hates the elderly or simply pities them. Its treatment of Elisasue, disabled and lonely, the bastard child of unmonitored scientific experimentation, is played for laughs, rather than used as an opportunity to analyse the political positioning of those who fail to meet the media's high physical standards.
I’m left wondering why a film seemingly designed to critique media representations of ageing, double-downed so hard on making ageing and age-related disability deeply grotesque. The Substance spends so much time glorifying scantily clad bodies, in order, I presume, to contrast it to the ageing and dying body of Elisabeth, but in doing so, it misses its point. Focusing on aesthetics over substance, it leaves us not thinking that it is an injustice but rather - how disgusting is Elisabeth by the end of the film, I hope I don’t look like that when I’m old. Nothing is transgressed here - disgust and abuse of the elderly is, unfortunately, a social norm rather than a taboo, and, so, The Substance does little but affirm many people's view that the young body should be hypersexualised, consumed by the media, and the old body should disappear and die.
If you want films about ageing, that are not simply unkind spectacles, that do not treat the elderly or disabled as grotesque creatures to kill, watch Nomadland, Everything Everywhere All At Once. Television series such as Mare of Easttown and Big Little Lies are centred on women of the same age as Demi Moore in their narratives, without treating their age like a crime. For the first time, women over thirty regularly appear in narratives that do not focus on their age or appearance; don’t waste your time on something that tries its best not to hate them, but fails spectacularly.
Edited by Cameron Cade
Image IMDB
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