Everyman
Well, that was certainly the most unpleasant two hours I've spent in a movie house in living memory. Which is not quite the same as saying I didn't have a good time.
"I haven't seen it yet" said the on-duty manager at the Everyman "But apparently it's edgy, gory and vomit-inducing... Enjoy the movie." I was reminded slightly of the 1931 Frankenstein pre-cred. Apparently there had been walkouts on previous evenings.
So, how to describe the Substance? It's kind of like Sunset Boulevard retold in the style of Alien. Unhelpful? Okay. Imagine the Picture of Dorian Grey cross-bred with Blade Runner? All right: have you seen Goodbye Christopher Robin? Well, it's absolutely nothing like that. Sofa-buddy wants me to say that it's a victory of style over substance, but naturally I wouldn't stoop that low.
Not since The Passion of the Christ has so much tomato ketchup been strategically deployed. The Passion of the Christ is another film the Substance is almost completely unlike. Although when an eviscerated body leaves an artistic trail of blood across a white floor, I did wonder if some quoting was going on. I have seen Cronenberg's 1996 film about the people who are sexually turned on by road accidents. Ironically, I saw it in September 1997, at what is now the Cube. This is quite a lot more extreme.
Demi Moore is an aging Hollywood film actor, and so is Elizabeth Sparkle, the character she plays in the Substance. The opening three and a half minutes are quite possibly the best thing in the movie. We see, from pavement level, Elizabeth's Hollywood Star being installed, unveiled, and then getting walked on and tarnished, and finally having a burger spilled all over it. (The fact that it was a burger and not a dog shows admirable restraint, I thought.) Elizabeth makes her living doing day-time aerobic shows, but, when she turns fifty she loses that gig as well. She's sneaked into the Men's loo because the Ladies' is out of order and overhears the odious Harvey (Dennis Quaid) talking firing her while she's locked in a cubicle. I don't know if that's a conscious reference to Robocop but it's such a cliche it was used in an Allied Dunbar insurance advert in the 1980s. She is given a mysterious memory stick by a mysterious medic which tells her about a mysterious new drug, "The Substance" which enables a person to "be their best self".
To the credit of the movie, the science, or source, and the origin of the Substance is never remotely explained. Like the Monolith in 2001 it stands as a symbol or a metaphor. The Substance is nothing like 2001 although Also Sprach Zarathustra is briefly played during the movies' absurd climax. Straus's fanfare also turns up at the beginning of Barbie, come to think of it. The Substance isn't very much like Barbie, but with its themes of empowerment and beauty and the male gaze it could be taken as a Cert 18 response to the pink doll movie.
Elizabeth injects herself with Substance in her huge bathroom. If you like interior decor, and in particular, long, brightly coloured corridors, and if you don't mind seeing them smothered in bodily fluids of various hues, this film is certainly for you. A younger, more perfect and more beautiful version of Elizabeth forces its way, Alien-style, out of her body. The younger Elizabeth has to sew her old self back together, which we see in slightly more detail than perhaps we needed to. She is now two people; a younger one and and older one. The Young Version is played by Margaret Qualley and now known as Sue (and kudos, again, for going with two actors rather than using CGI jiggery pokery to de-age Demi Moore). But like all devil's bargains, this comes at a price. Sue is only allowed to exist for one week at a time: the other weeks belong to her old self. When Elizabeth is alive, Sue is in a coma, and when Sue wakes up, Elizabeth has to go to sleep. The mysterious Substance-makers provide drugs and food-substitutes to facilitate all this. I assume they must also provide detailed medical instructions, but all we see is large cards saying things like YOU ARE ONE and THERE IS NO YOU AND THEM. There is no card which says DO NOT FEED HER AFTER MIDNIGHT, although with its gore and its body horror The Substance is not completely unlike Gremlins. Sue, naturally, gets Elizabeth's old job, as a much younger, prettier, and sexier aerobics instructor. The show is a huge success and everyone lives happily ever after.
No, of course they don't. Sue starts stealing time from Elizabeth -- staying awake for longer than her allotted week. This results in Elizabeth aging at an accelerated speed. The younger self and the older self are literally in competition; there is only so much life-essence to share out. The scheme could work if only some kind of alchemical balance could be achieved. But it can't be and it doesn't: Sue continues to steal time; Elizabeth continues to age; and everything gets more and more disgusting.
There was stuff I didn't completely understand: there is a lot of emphasis on Elizabeth manically gorging herself on vast quantities of food -- although the film is otherwise, thank god, nothing at all like the Whale. At one point Sue appears to give birth, Alien-style, to a chicken drumstick.
It turns out that Hollywood is a male-dominated industry which fetishises youth and beauty and objectifies women's bodies. This is perhaps not an entirely original insight. Harvey says things like "pretty girls should smile all the time" and "I wish her tits were in the centre of her face instead of that nose". But for a film that is (I assume) satirising those attitudes, we spend an awful lot of time looking at Sue's bottom; and an awful lot of time being asked to find older women's bodies repulsive and disgusting.
The film goes on considerably longer than it needs to. We see the final result of Elizabeth having misused the Substance: the make-up and prosthetic departments go about as far over the top as it is possible to go. The film is not very much like the Elephant Man, except in this one respect. I think the curtain could have happily come down on the final degenerate female iteration, but the final denouement dials the disgustingness and the gore up to purely cartoon levels. The final image, which I will not spoil, is utterly grotesque and slightly comedic, but kind of pulls the whole film together.
Our revels now are ended, and like this insubstantial pageant faded...
No. I promised I wouldn't.
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