Though much has already been written about Coralie Fargeat’s body horror fantasia about the pitfalls of female self-esteem, not enough of the discussion has focused on Dennis Quaid’s performance as a TV producer named Harvey. Though Quaid’s male chauvinist caricature is repellently hilarious in ways you could imagine, it’s the subtext that grabbed me, since in the same year that Quaid played Harvey he also played Ronald Reagan in a decidedly MAGA-friendly biopic, and I couldn’t get that image out of my head during the scene where Harvey is introduced munching his salad in a particularly grotesque way. Though I would never gainsay Quaid’s acting chops in light of his politics (after all, he played the closeted gay husband in Todd Haynes’ Far from Heaven, though it feels like a million years ago), I really wonder what prompted Fargeat to cast him as this smug POS, who basically starts the plot moving by firing our protagonist, nominally over-the-hill Hollywood star Elizabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore), from her long-time gig as the host of a fitness show in order to replace her with someone much younger. And while I wouldn’t assume that only blatant assholes like Harvey do these kinds of sexist things without a shred of regret (“You won an Oscar? For what? King Kong?”), the fact that it’s this guy sets a very specific tone for the rest of the movie.

The fun starts when Elizabeth, smarting keenly from the insult of losing her only livelihood, is turned on to the titular treatment, which she has to jump through hoops to obtain. The skinny is that the Substance will help you shed years, at least in terms of appearance, and Elizabeth is desperate to get her entertainment mojo back, even though the person who hips her to the treatment adds a warning proviso that Elizabeth doesn’t really hear. When she finally gets her hands on the generically labeled box, which promises to give her “a better version of yourself,” she may not take the usage directions as seriously as she should. She is so intent on getting where she’s going as soon as possible that she doesn’t absorb them. And once the effects kick in she literally emerges from her body as a much younger person who calls herself Sue and is played by Margaret Qualley. Sue proceeds to audition for Elizabeth’s old job as the fitness host and, naturally, nails it, because she knows exactly what’s expected of her from the standpoint of the producers. Consequently, Elizabeth/Sue must maintain a regimen of Substance intake that’s in “balance”—following a transformation she must rest her body, for one thing—otherwise things will go south, as they inevitably do. That’s because, while the invisible person behind the treatment insists that the two personalities are the same being, in reality they act differently for reasons that are instantly apparent: Elizabeth is working from knowledge that has been eating away at her self-confidence for years, while Sue still “feels” she has her life ahead of her. Their needs are totally different, and when those needs clash, things get squishy real fast.

The comedy springs from the extreme contrast between the beautiful lifestyle that Elizabeth live and aspires to—her sky-high apartment with floor-to-ceiling windows says it all—and the physiological decripitude that the Substance accelerates when misused, mainly by Sue, even though, in the end, it’s Elizabeth who suffers. Fargeat accentuates this contrast with a lot of nudity that, at first, is the sort of thing that normally gets the guys’ juices running, but those juices become a little too literal as the movie heads into the final, unbelievable stretch. You can say a lot about Fargeat’s overt fetishization of her female actors, and how easily the attractive surfaces rupture and split, but while you watch The Substance all you can think about is all that flesh and fluid and where the hell it came from. You’ll never look at a can of Diet Coke the same way again.

Now playing in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Hibiya (050-6868-5068), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063), Shinjuku Piccadilly (050-6861-3011), 109 Cinemas Premium Shinjuku (03-6709-6410), Human Trust Cinema Shibuya (03-5468-5551), Toho Cinemas Nihonbashi (050-6868-5060), Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills (050-6868-5024).

The Substance home page in Japanese

photo (c) The Match Factory