GENRE | Demi Moore Ages Gracefully – 'The Substance' x TIFF 2024

"Pretty girls should always smile!"

Toronto International Film Festival

It's hard to imagine a more violent or gnarly encapsulation of Hollywood female self-loathing than French filmmaker and Revenge writer/director Coralie Fargeat's bonkers skewering of our youth-obsessed glam culture in her sophomore feature film, the body horror satire The Substance.

Starring a fearless Demi Moore and sexy Margaret Qualley as an aging fifty-year-old actress and the younger version of herself, "Sue," birthed when she gets a mysterious liquid injection, the titular "Substance," serving as an obvious but appropriate metaphor for plastic surgery, botox, or other extreme anti-aging tactics commonplace in the entertainment industry. How the drugs are employed through Moore's sculpted, well-aged body and mirrored through Qualley's tight physical transformation serve as the actress' idealized double.

Moore is unhinged and sensational in her desperation gone to extreme measures as exasperated by Dennis Quaid's chauvinistic television producer. Her grotesque tailspin behaviour devolves itself into a bloody feminist screed about the real-life horrors we put women through in the name of selling a disgusting male fantasy that does not exist in any reality. Even its conception of sex is warped into the male gaze by way of its female stars and director.

At a hundred and forty minutes long with a truly wild, extended third act, The Substance drags from its tight setup and payoff before an aforementioned crescendo of horror. It's a controlled mess expressing the damaged psyche of an aging star turned fitness guru descended into attractive madness told as a twisted, candy-coated but gross fairytale.

The Substance screened at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival as part of the Midnight Madness program.


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