If you could create a better version of yourself, would you do it ?
Head’s up : this is going to be a very long one. Be warned.
This film is crafted in such a way that important details can easily slip through a first viewing. We enter a universe similar to ours, but different enough that we know it is not our reality.
For those who don’t know, The Substance follows a 50-year-old actress who loses her job because of her age, on her very birthday. As a dedicated careerist, this loss negates her entire life and quickly confronts her with her reflection in the mirror and the gradual erasure of her personal accomplishments. She turns to “The Substance,” which extracts only the best traits from her DNA to create a second, younger, and perfect version of herself.
At first glance, the movie seems extremely superficial, positioning itself from the perspective of a Peter Pan syndrome mixed with a need for recognition linked to celebrity… But since it’s made by Coralie Fargeat, the creator of Revenge, you know you’re in for a ride.
Warning: We are diving into spoilers here, consider yourself warned!
The movie begins with a high-angle shot explaining “The Substance,” with an injected egg yolk that spreads a little, and from which a second, perfectly round yolk emerges. This is followed by a second overhead shot of Elisabeth Sparkle’s star on the Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles.
From its creation to its celebration, then its erosion and finally its oblivion.
It’s a touching parallel because the Hollywood industry treats its actresses exactly this way—they quickly sink into oblivion regardless of their achievements once they are no longer “beautiful” enough for the public eye.
They go from fame to nothing over one wrinkle too many, while men age “like fine wine” and are highlighted regardless of their white hair, weight, or sagging skin.
The dialogue around the star is similar : everyone wants a photo, then seasons pass and some say their mother really liked this actress, then tourists ask who it is, before struggling to pick up a fallen hamburger off of it.
It never snows in L.A.: this is one of the anomalies that shows the difference between this universe and ours.
The “male gaze” vs the female body
The Substance is filmed by a woman, but from a male perspective. She knew how to show to what extent the physical body is judged only to please. From the producer (named Harvey, like Weinstein, who seems to have the same behavior), to the casting director, the shareholders, the set employees, and finally the public. Skills are secondary. As we hear at one point: “She can dance; it’s a shame her tits aren’t where her nose is.”
Consequently, there are many zooms on parts of the female body—scrutinized and analyzed.
Demi Moore plays Elisabeth Sparkle, the main actress at the end of her career. She walks through an entire hallway dedicated to her exploits (a hallway which is, by the way, a huge nod to The Shining) when she leaves the shooting of her show. The women’s restrooms being out of order, she uses the men’s, and in comes her producer (played by Dennis Quaid) on the phone, who while urinating says that she must be replaced because she is too old, they need something new, younger, better.
All while finishing and leaving without washing his hands.
It illustrates the fact that the woman is a product, an object, used by a man with a very basic physique and an abhorrent lack of manners. We see him later at the restaurant eating shrimps in a close-up, mouth fully open, food flying everywhere.
This scene, to me, is the most foul of the movie.
We’re talking about a movie that is mostly body horror and blood. But the way he plays and the way it’s filmed, we immediately see what type of person he is. He fires her without even explaining why, then ignores her and leaves her at the table alone to go greet another very basic and aging man, also from the Hollywood scene.
As a reminder, the main role is played by Demi Moore, I feel like I’m repeating myself a lot on this, but even if she has had surgery, Demi Moore is 60 years old in real life.
She is clearly better looking than I will ever be. Replacing her because she is no longer “enough” is reminiscent of the monologue in Barbie where Margot Robbie says she is not beautiful enough.
I like to imagine it’s done on purpose, taking some of the most beautiful women in Hollywood to show that everyone has issues with their reflection in the mirror… but it doesn’t really work as well with actresses this pretty.
The last straw
On her way home after being fired, she sees workers removing her face from a billboard, which distracts her enough to cause an accident. Aging is hard for everyone, but it must be extra hard when it’s tied to fame.
She ends up in the hospital where a doctor wishes her a happy birthday and says his wife is a fan : she bursts into tears. A young nurse then examines her and tells her she’d be a “good candidate”, slipping her a USB key with a note: “It changed my life.” We’ll see him again briefly later.
She then runs into an old classmate, Fred, whom she doesn’t even recognize at all. He gives her his number, clearly crushing on her.
Fred represents someone who finds her beautiful, but she ignores him, choosing not to acknowledge that she still appeals to people. Nothing has changed, she is still gorgeous, only her vision of herself through the Hollywood lens destroyed her.
Back home, we see the only decoration in her living room is a massive portrait of her younger self which dominates the room by its size, and her Oscars.
She watches video on the USB key: “You are one single person. There is no ‘her’ and ‘you.’ You are one, and you must alternate every 7 days without fail.”
She ends up throwing away the USB key with the phone number, but goes back to it after receiving flowers telling her she “was” at the top and seeing an ad looking for a woman aged 18 to 30 years old to replace her.
The mirror trap
This is where we truly see self-hatred and the rejection of aging.
There are many scenes in the bathroom—the place of preparation and scrutiny.
Elisabeth is driven by fear : fear of solitude, fear of aging, fear of being forgotten. Demi Moore, at 60, has a perfect body. But with Hollywood’s beauty standards, she only sees her own flaws.
Alone with herself. Alone with a vision of herself that she can no longer bear.
Naked and vulnerable, she injects herself.
Upon injection, the room spins, a second pupil separates from hers, her back splits open, and Sue (played by Margaret Qualley) emerges.
A better version—younger, prettier, more perfect.
Also scrutinized from every angle, the nude scene here is accompanied by more movements, colors, and joy.
It is a renewal. Far from depression and hatred, it is a transition towards a lost happiness.
At first, Sue takes care of Elisabeth, sewing her up putting her head on something soft, and feeding her. There is still compassion and balance, but we see what Elisabeth is willing to put her body through to regain confidence. It’s similar to plastic surgery or addiction—destroying parts of the body for a feeling of something “better.”
Throughout the film, I thought of Requiem for a Dream—the visuals, the music, the downward spiral. There are also parallels to The Picture of Dorian Gray: “If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that—for that—I would give everything ! There is nothing in the world that I would not give… My soul, even !”
There are nods to Lynch, Kubrick, and Cronenberg, but Requiem remains the strongest comparison.
The visual descent
Sue takes back Elisabeth’s old job, even though she could have done anything else with this new life. She becomes the new darling of the network. She even has a billboard that looks directly into their living room. Everything smiles upon her, she has the physique, the youth, and the knowledge of the trade. She knows what the public wants and gives it to them on a silver platter.
But one night, Sue decides not to respect the 7-day limit.
The system works by extracting fluid from the matrix’s (Elisabeth’s) spinal cord. Upon waking, Elisabeth discovers her finger is decomposing—a direct consequence of Sue’s actions by taking an extra day.
The “Substance” company tells her: “What is used on one side is lost on the other.”
Her witch finger will stay as is, but nothing worse will happen to her if she ends the experiment. Sue will disappear and that will be all. Instinctively, in that moment, we would tend to want her to stop, but without that there would be no movie. We already know it’s going to go from bad to worse, we know her self-hatred is at the edge of the precipice, so naturally, she decides to continue.
207
That’s where we cross paths with the nurse again, the only person who also seems to use the Substance.
Number 207.
A scene follows with a monologue that tells her it’s hard, this 7-day week to live, waiting to find the best part of oneself. The solitude, the lack of purpose, the lack of reason to exist.
Chelsea from the Dead Meat podcast did a whole analysis of colors, notably the contrast between blue, pink, and yellow and the impact that has on the position of characters in the story. I am not going to explain it here, but I invite you to go listen to it, it’s a theory that gives depth to certain scenes.
The most haunting passage for me is when Elisabeth tries to reach out to Fred. He is her lighthouse in the dark.
The only compliment she received throughout the movie. She puts on a beautiful red dress and makeup, hiding her decomposed finger with gloves.
But right before leaving, she catches sight of Sue’s billboard. She spirals.
She goes back to the bathroom to add more makeup, more lipstick. She sees Sue’s body in the closet, and decides to put on a scarf to hide her neck, which is a fairly visible mark of aging in women.
She is finally about to leave and catches her reflection on her front door handle, a reflection that gives a Christmas ball effect and distorts her body. She then goes back one last time to the bathroom and tries to re-modify her appearance, then smears her makeup, messes up her hair while screaming and abandons Fred without even answering him.
She gives up.
True to life
I have lived this scene. Many of us have. Not in a sci-fi context, but the act of trying to get ready, failing, making it worse, and staying home because your own reflection sickens you. Whether it’s growing old or not succeeding in measuring up to the beauty standards of society, when it happens, it hurts.
I’ve talked about it with my mother: we are always ourselves inside an aging body. We don’t “see” ourselves becoming old. We just are, externally. Accepting that the reflection changes while the inside stays young is the hardest part. Wrinkles on an eternal teenager.
Eating disorder ?
The transfers are done with fairly violent nightmares before the body changes between Sue and Elisabeth.
The girls see the worst of each side before waking up.
We therefore witness Sue pulling out an entire chicken drumstick from her navel in her nightmare, when she discovers that Elisabeth spent the week binge eating on the sofa.
Food is a weird topic here. I don’t remember ever seeing Sue eat. But Elizabeth, in her anger, is mostly only seen eating. I assume it’s again linked to society’s impossible standards on women… or maybe just that she has to eat for two ?
The clock is ticking
Sue begins to stay young longer, draining Elisabeth’s spinal cord. Elisabeth wakes up with gray hair, cataracts, and an 80-year-old leg that has trouble unfolding. Now looking like the clichés of a witch, she finally opens her end-of-contract gift, which is a cookbook, wrapped in Christmas wrapping paper. They took an impersonal gift and wrapped it with what they had on hand. It’s typically the gift that shows they didn’t care about her.
She starts cooking in a chaotic apartment, splashing eggs on the windows to hide Sue’s billboard. We witness her skills here—she built a hidden closet, she cooks—but she doesn’t value them without having a loving audience.
The distinction of the two is strongly felt at Sue’s awakening, who discovers the apartment in an absolute mess from floor to ceiling.
And sincerely, with the eggs used on the windows for a week, I can’t even imagine the smell. It’s the last straw.
Sue extracts so much fluid that the insertion point looks like Jared Leto’s arm at the end of Requiem for a Dream—infected and black. Unfortunately the stabilizer liquid comes out black from the syringe. Sue then contacts The Substance to find out how to restore it and discovers that the liquid will regenerate if she re-transfers with Elisabeth.
That’s where we discover the direct consequences of the 3 months spent as Sue.
Elisabeth now resembles the illegitimate child of Gollum and the Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Bald, hunchbacked, aged to the extreme, she finally decides to end the experiment.
She decides to euthanize Sue but stops herself : “I need you. I hate myself, you are the best part of me.”
Her ego is not yet ready to accept the loss of her youth. She tries to bring Sue back, and for the first time, both versions are awake at the same time.
Sue murders Elisabeth in a fit of rage when she understands what happened.
A weird Pinocchio story
But there is no “other” without the matrix. On New Year’s Eve, her “perfect night”, she is ready for her live, surrounded by pretty half-naked women that the shareholders and producers leer at greedily.
But without the stabilizer, Sue’s body starts to decompose. She loses her teeth, then her nail, and finally an ear, before rushing to the apartment.
Desperate, she uses the “Activator” on herself—a copy of a copy. An abomination.
This creates “Monstro Elisasue”—a Cronenbergian mutation with teeth on its chest and Elisabeth’s head gasping for air on its shoulder.
She drags her own placenta behind her every step.
Despite this, Monstro puts on a dress, burns the very little hair she has left, mutilates her own ear and goes on stage.
She takes back out the huge photo of Elisabeth’s glory period that Sue had removed, cuts it up and glues her old head with superglue on her face.
We are in a universe where a clone of oneself can exist, so it must be understood that the following does not make much sense in the reality of our world, but does in the film. Monstro arrives at the New Year’s show in her final state, goes on stage and thanks everyone, with difficulty, telling them that she missed them.
The fame, the spotlights, the fans, the public.
She vomits a breast and her glued-on face falls off.
The audience screams and attacks her, her wrist breaks spraying the public with several hundred liters of blood in the process. She then flees, spraying blood all over the hallway of her old job.
She tries to walk home, but her leg breaks, smashing Monstro to the ground, making her explode.
From what should have caused her death, the shoulder with Elisabeth’s face crawls detaches itself and crawls her way to her star on the Hollywood Blvd. Head looking up at the stars, she goes back to her glory days : the applause, the compliments, the joy. She then dies with a smile on her face, dissolving into a puddle.
Morning comes, and her entire existence is erased by a street cleaner, who leaves behind nothing but her broken star on the sidewalk.
The search for eternal youth is a war against oneself—a war impossible to win.
Elisabeth is stuck in Monstro Elisasue, fighting for every breath of air. She suffers at her own hands there.
Having used the substance, having let Sue take control of her life, and having, in a moment of despair, tried to recreate a new version of herself even better than Sue. Disappearing completely in the process.
When Elisabeth’s body was abused for 3 months, no one worried about it. Her career was over, she had been exploited all her life, and there was nothing left “worthy” of her. When Sue crossed paths with the shareholders after losing her teeth, they asked to smile. She did it, with tears in her eyes, and no one reacted.
One last thought
Many people didn’t like the ending, finding it too much, not real enough or credible in our universe…but they missed the crushing imagery of the eternal search for “more” most of us are subject to.
The editing is great, the visuals are stunning, the SFX is perfect and the topics are deep and bold.
The movie stays with you long after you leave the end credits.
This is one of the rare 5/5 ratings
🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇