A Fearless Demi Moore Faces the Horrors of Aging—or Not—in ‘The Substance’

Within the Nineteen Nineties, Demi Moore was briefly the highest-paid actress on this planet, commanding $12 million for Striptease. Moore’s profession slowed after that apex, although she’s labored loads in a lot of assorted fare, most just lately stealing just a few scenes as an aggrieved socialite in Feud: Capote vs. the Swans. But it surely’s been a protracted whereas since she’s had a lead function as juicy as her half in The Substance, a gnarly body-horror sci-fi satire that premiered right here on the Cannes Movie Competition on Might 19.

The movie, from French writer-director Coralie Fargeat, takes brutal intention at a tradition that Moore is aware of all too properly: the horrible stress positioned on girls to without end be younger and exquisite, actuality be damned. Moore’s is a savvy piece of casting in that regard; she’s been put by way of the media wringer all through her 40-year profession, scrutinized and speculated about and solid apart. Maybe desirous to vent about all that, or on the very least make a remark, Moore tears into The Substance, committing herself with the hearth of somebody with one thing pressing to say.

She performs Elisabeth Sparkle, a former film star turned TV health guru (an apparent allusion to Jane Fonda) who appears to dwell a lonely life when she’s not smiling and high-kicking for the cameras. When she finds out that the present’s producers are buying and selling her in for, properly, a more moderen mannequin, Elisabeth procures a mysterious elixir that, she’s promised by a disembodied voice in a video, will create a youthful model of herself. But it surely gained’t de-age her like Isabella Rossellini’s serum did for the ladies of Dying Turns into Her. As an alternative, it fairly gruesomely creates a second physique from Elisabeth’s DNA. She will be able to spend seven days because the youthful being, performed by Margaret Qualley, however should maintain swapping again to her common self each different week, lest one thing unhealthy occur—Elisabeth hasn’t been advised what.

Do you, pricey reader, suppose that Elisabeth honors that rule? After all she doesn’t; would you, given the prospect to inhabit a physique the world deems a lot extra fascinating? Elisabeth, who goes by Sue when within the new physique, will get her job again and shortly ascends the ladder of fame whereas her outdated physique lies comatose on the lavatory flooring or in a hidden closet. It’s a woeful sight, this complete abnegation of self to fulfill societal calls for. Elisabeth locations calls for on herself too, however The Substance does not likely examine the fraught hyperlink between inside and exterior pressures.

Fargeat units the movie in a hyper-stylized model of our world, which perhaps undermines the relevance of its message. One longs for the film to be grounded in additional actuality in order that the mounting surreality of Elisbeth’s personal life would stand in starker distinction. With out that nuance, Fargeat can solely make factors broadly—largely about cosmetic surgery and different beauty procedures.

In that critique, maybe an excessive amount of blame is positioned on the ladies who pursue such cures and, in some instances, take issues too far. Humorous and gamely ridiculous as The Substance turns into, it’s at its core telling a really unhappy story of a girl destroying herself within the determined hopes of doing the other. Fargeat is proof against such rumination, although, and retains ratcheting up the gross-out comedy because the movie extends properly previous the two-hour mark. There are too many endings right here, as if Fargeat had a number of nice concepts for remaining pictures however couldn’t resolve on one. So that they’re all thrown in, one after the opposite, because the movie wears out its well-earned welcome.

Moore and Qualley maintain promoting it, although. Moore particularly connects, deftly negotiating an intense transformation that’s most likely essentially the most bodily performing she’s achieved since G.I. Jane. It’s a thrill to observe an actor go for broke like this, seemingly so dedicated to the reason for their movie. Fargeat, for essentially the most half, doesn’t fail that willpower. The work has paid off, and The Substance was an enormous crowd-pleaser at this competition.

Which is probably one thing of an irony, given a selected ethos about girls and sweetness that pervades at Cannes. Right here all of us are, having fun with a send-up of a system wherein we’re additionally keen members. I suppose that’s a tragic irony befitting of The Substance, a imply and intelligent film that might be sharper however is as a substitute successfully blunt. Possibly, no less than, we are able to all really feel slightly bit higher about ourselves the subsequent time some beautiful twenty-something strides previous on the Croisette—certain it will be good to be them, however at what price?