Review: Demi Moore brilliantly seizes the role of her lifetime in 'The Substance'
Anyone here who'd like to look younger? If so, rush to a cineplex and get an eyeful of "The Substance," a mesmerizing mindbender starring Demi Moore in a career-best performance as Elisabeth Sparkle, an Oscar-winning star turned TV fitness diva who's about to get axed by sexist network exec Harvey (Dennis Quaid) for committing the cardinal sin of—wait for it— aging.
Moore, of course, looks smashing at 61. But Hollywood banishes women to oblivion at the first sign of a wrinkle. No one knows this better than Elisabeth (or Demi).
At the sight of a freeway billboard of her face being ripped down, Elisabeth nearly totals her car. Rushed to the hospital, she's made aware of an experimental "substance" that might solve all her problems.
Too good to be true? Isn't it always. But here's where writer-director Coralie Fargeat, who flipped the switch on the male gaze in 2018's "Revenge," takes aim at impossible standards of sexiness dished out by toxic male bosses who leash their jobs to their pervy erotic fantasies.
What a world, right? And Fargeat is mad as hell about it. More crucially, she is not shy about lighting a fuse on her anger. "The Substance" is unapologetically graphic about ideals of beauty beyond the reach of mere mortals and the "body horror" inflicted in the name of achieving it.
You may want to cover your eyes when the substance causes Elisabeth's back to split open and let out a younger version of herself called Sue. The clone, who only slightly resembles Elisabeth, calls herself Sue.
She's played wonderfully by Margaret Qualley, the real life daughter of model/actress Andie MacDowell, in a meta portrayal of startling ingenuity.
There's a catch, and it's a doozy. Sue can only be up and about for a week at a time, forcing Elisabeth to lay low until Sue is ready to make a reappearance and vice versa. It's not long before Demi and her doppelganger are at each other's throats.
Complications ensue when Sue is hired by Elisabeth's old boss (Quaid is scarily hilarious as Harvey) to star in a new workout show called "Pump It Up." When Elisabeth sees Sue's face on billboards that once featured her, the tension reaches a breaking point.
"The Substance" is a dark modern fable that starts out blaming men for reducing women to sex objects and then cuts deeper. Fargeat saves a special rage for women who conspire in their own diminishment, trading their soul in a pulse beat for a few more shining hours as a goddess.
For all it's shocking shifts into R-rated gore, "The Substance" is never less than a gripping takedown of the drug of youth obsession. Having already won the screenwriting prize at Cannes and a coveted audience award at the Toronto Film Festival, "The Substance" could quite easily grab Oscar attention for the ferocious fun it makes of unleashed vanity.
Kudos to Moore who brilliantly seizes the role of her lifetime—her final showdown with Qualley is a bloody marvel with special effects that deserve their own awards attention.
Yet it's in a quieter moment that Moore shows acting resources we've never seen her investigate. She's especially raw and riveting in a scene where Elisabeth preps for a date, her face in a mirror reflecting every emotion from self-love to self-loathing. In a remarkable tour de force, Moore pushes past vanity to find the bruised heart of a character who literally splits herself in half to preserve the illusion of timeless allure.
Says this about "The Substance"— you've never seen anything like it in your life.
