Demi Moore gives a career-best performance as Elisabeth Sparkle, a former A-lister past her prime and suddenly fired from her fitness TV show by repellent studio head Harvey (Dennis Quaid).
She is then drawn to the opportunity presented by a mysterious new drug: The Substance. All it takes is one injection and she is reborn - temporarily - as the gorgeous, twentysomething Sue (Margaret Qualley).
The only rule? Time needs to be split: exactly one week in one body, then one week in the other. No exceptions. A perfect balance. What could go wrong
The Garden Cinema View:
Finally following up her superb Revenge, Coralie Fargeat delivers a squishy, body-horror-Hollywood- satire; a broad critique of our/the media’s obsession with female beauty, and the disposability of middle aged performers. The Substance stretches its skin over a dense frame of cinematic references, and there is a degree of pleasure in spotting all the nods to Kubrick, Hitchcock, Sunset Boulevard, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, and many more. Admittedly, this reaches a point of oversaturation, and a couple of famous music cues feel awkwardly on the nose. The Substance is perversely enjoyable (the hefty running time flies by), but it doesn’t match the depth of Cronenberg’s best body-horrors, the genuine unease of Lynch’s Hollywood nightmares, or the sense of actual transgression of Julia Ducournau’s Titane.
