Elisabeth Sparkle's story isn't a new one. In fact, the fictional actress's slow and agonizing slide into obsolescence is so timeless that The Substance — which won the People's Choice Midnight Madness Award at TIFF 2024 — summarizes it in the span of a single camera setup.
Conferring symbolic power onto an object that represents a career high-point, the opening minutes observe the construction of Elisabeth's Hollywood Walk of Fame star from above, followed by its subsequent journey through the years as it weathers the cheers, jeers, wheels and footfalls of various passersby. The surroundings swallow the star incrementally; cracks appear, its shine and polish gradually dissipate and finally, an errant splat of ketchup mars its surface, hastily wiped, the residue left to melt in the sun.
When we finally see this heralded superstar, played by a delightfully faded Demi Moore, she is being unwittingly suffocated by the remnants of her diminishing fame. A supposedly peaceful existence encased in expired ephemera (an '80s style aerobics program has become her final refuge) is shattered by Harvey (Dennis Quaid), a caricature of predatory producers that may just be the closest this stubbornly cartoonish, playfully abstract film comes to resembling the real world.
Cast out of her show to make way for a bouncy 20-something, the reeling Elisabeth follows flash drives, key cards and cryptic phone calls to a sinister PO box. Inside, she finds one of cinema's least enticing Faustian bargains: a mysterious substance injected into the bloodstream that will spawn a younger version of its user, gaining all of the enviable physical attributes the source supposedly lacks. The catch? Every seven days, the two must trade places — one of them in the spotlight, the other hidden away, regaining their strength. "The perfect balance," if the dealer's disembodied voice is to be believed.
After a too-brief period of apprehension, the desperate Elisabeth gives in to temptation and shoots up. Out plops Sue (Margaret Qualley); curious, glistening, new, perfectly trimmed and waxed. She marches into the audition room for Harvey's show and captures every source of male attention she can, wasting no time in savouring the power that goes hand-in-hand with her institutional subjugation. (She is, after all, in a time crunch.)
As Sue and Elisbeth stretch the boundaries of the substance's rules and constraints, the voice's insistence on their supposedly unified self is increasingly called into question. What should have been a reciprocal relay race is corrupted by those inescapably human emotions of jealousy and self-hatred. The spectacular consequences of their failure to coexist should not be spoiled, but viewers should prepare themselves for the maximal degree of cruel irony that the situation calls for.
While the film's logline seems to point toward another addition to the New French Extreme, writer, director and producer Coralie Fargeat's influences are more varied (though arguably overplayed). As The Substance navigates an arch, acrid tone lost somewhere between Larry Cohen and David Lynch, Fargeat somersaults between Kubrickian wide-angles, sterile flights of lascivious fancy, visual references to anti-Hollywood screeds of yore, and squelching gore effects worthy of makeup-maestros Brian Yuzna and Stuart Gordon. Befitting its express mission of mining tried-and-true themes, the film isn't any more or less than the sum of its allusions, but the note of hysteria that The Substance sustains is something that modern cinema-goers have long been craving, and long been denied by the risk-averse powers that be.
The rambling results are more engaging than they are successful, and it's always a shame to watch a film explore the full implications of its premise at the expense of coherence and watchability — at nearly two and a half hours, The Substance simply contains too many digressions vying for space.
By the time it reaches its splashy conclusion — an equal parts side-splitting and devastating SFX showcase that plays out under the remorseless gaze of a watching spotlight — the ferocious energy generated in its best moments has long been spent. The film is one big breathless, emphatic joke (on whom may be a question better left unanswered), but its glib coating masks a deep anguish, a genuine horror at the lose-lose prospect of having — or choosing — to live your life through the commodified images that others have taken of you.
The Substance makes an admirable effort to overcome the hurdles it enthusiastically places in its own path; an undeniable feat of audacity and showmanship, the film's clumsiness is at once a fatal flaw and a saving grace.