The Substance (2024)

Coraline Fargeat's second feature The Substance (after her thriller Revenge in 2017), won best screenplay in last year's Cannes Film Festival. Should've won best actress for Demi Moore but they gave that for ensemble to Emilia Perez. No comments. But now Demi has won the Golden Globe, will be nominated for an Oscar and I hope she wins, she deserves that totally and More than that.

Note on Jan. 23d: Nominated for 5 Oscars, Coraline Fargeat for Directing and original screenplay, Demi Moore for best actress, make up and hair stilling and Best Picture ! My predictions,  Demi and maybe best screenplay !

Also Margaret Qualley is great in it (and stunning). You've seen her in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Lanthimos' Poor Things, Kinds of Kindness and Drive-Away Dolls. Her future is Bright !

Dennis Quaid plays cartoonlike a caricature of a manager, Ray Liotta was supposed to play this part but he died before the film production. I think Quaid is better, 'cos he played a lot of straight characters, while Liotta was lampooning himself in a lot of his films.

Fargeat's film I found more digerable than Julia Ducournau's exploits, Grave /Raw and Titane, which are overdone and overbearing. Keep in mind, if a male director would've done this film in 2024, no festival would've touch it and he would've been "luggered" (or lapidated).  Anyway, I don't think a man could've done the same kind of approach and message, it's a woman's film about women's condition in the showbiz industry, and not only, about aging and about the compromises you make in order to be noticed. It's a very superficial world and it fades out quickly, but the subject is treated with acidity, irony and black humor. And great body horror gore practical effects. The whole thing could've been summarized in the opening and closing of the film, with the story star on the Hollywood Boulevard (a great short imo). 

The music is by British artist Raffertie (Benjamin but it's more like a sound design, pounding and very effective. Can't be listened separately tho. 

See it in a cinema, for the sound design,  set design, bright costumes (that yellow coat, that pink bodysuit), the cinematography (by Benjamin Kracun)  and the visceral effect. 

Also warning, not for the faint at/of heart, and sensible stomachs !!!

There are many posters for the film, all good, from the B&W to this kaleidoscope puzzle. 

References galore: from Lynch's LA (shot in Cannes and Antibes no less), to David Cronenberg (The Fly is quoted tooth and nail ;), Brian De Palma (Carrie's blood shower),  Kubrick's The Shining, The Elephant Man, Frankenheimer's Seconds, All about Eve, Sunset Blvd., even Zemeckis' Death Becomes Her. 

As Demi Moore described the film: " a blend of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, Death Becomes Her (1992), and a Jane Fonda workout video."

A great and extended making of from Mubi (the worldwide distributor of the film buying it Cannes cos the original backer, Working Title, a division of Universal backed away ):