The Substance (2024)
I had a slightly different take-away when watching The Substance.
I had the joy of seeing The Substance (2024) twice over the past month or so. My first viewing was with my wife, and I left the theatre thinking “Obviously it’s about A, but clearly there’s a lot about B here as well.” When I got home and started reading interviews with the writer/director Coralie Fargeat and reviews from other folks, it seemed to me as though no one was mentioning B at all(!). This led me to start exploring why I was seemingly the only one looking at the movie through this lens and making this connection.
I saw it for a second time a couple weeks later with my friend and, knowing where it was going and how I had felt the first time around, I really tried to narrow in on the root of my feelings to see if it was a one-off or if B actually had legs. Where I landed is this: I don’t think that B actually exists, I think it was me projecting my own personal stuff onto it. That said, I do think my own personal stuff is worth airing out, and so here it is, spoilers (THIS IS YOUR WARNING) and all.
(When I started writing this out about a month ago, The Substance was still widely showing in theatres, and I truly believe a big screen with a loud sound system is the best way to take in this movie. I’ve had a busy month (and I also scrapped it twice), so the movie is also now available to stream on Mubi.)
ACTIVATOR
As Elisabeth Sparkle (a fearless Demi Moore) turns 50, she is forced into early retirement from instructing her long-running mid-day TV fitness show by the station’s misogynistic producer, Harvey (an over-the-top Dennis Quaid). This kicks off a quick chain of events leading Elisabeth to try out a mysterious black-market drug called The Substance that creates “a new, younger, more beautiful, more perfect, you” through cell division.
Within minutes of self-administering the drug at home, Elisabeth’s back is split down the spine and a new girl, Sue (an equally fearless Margaret Qualley), springs forth - from the Matrix emerges the Other. From there, time spent out in the world is to be split equally between the two; the Matrix spends one week living their life as they please while the Other is left comatose being fed a week’s supply of goop until the Matrix initiates a switch, at which point the Other is out and about while the Matrix is comatose and so on and so on. Other than the Other having an additional task to perform (extract a stabilizer from the Matrix and inject it into themselves), they are essentially to treat each other as one singular unit.
STABILIZER
Her first week out, Sue gets Elisabeth’s old job as a mid-day TV fitness show instructor. As Sue’s show’s ratings soar and she becomes more and more active with friends and dates and whathaveyou, she starts becoming delinquent with initiating the required switch and offsets it by extracting more stabilizer. By not switching every week as they should and over-stabilizing instead, the Matrix (Elisabeth) begins to experience advanced aging of parts of her body; slowly at first, but as the Other (Sue) continues to take advantage of things, this process accelerates quickly.
From there, Sue becomes so popular that Harvey has her host the station’s biggest event, a live New Year’s Eve program. Elisabeth, growing incensed by Sue’s continued mistreatment of their situation, attacks Sue and attempts to murder her. Immediately after possibly being successful in this attempt - mere hours before the NYE show! - Elisabeth is filled with regret and revives Sue who then turns around and kills Elisabeth.
SWITCH
As Sue prepares for the big event, she herself starts to experience body failures - no more stabilizer! - prompting her to use residual Substance. Monstro Elisasue, a grotesque genetic mutant that would be like if Sloth from The Goonies (1985) found his way to Area X in Annihilation (2018), emerges from Sue as Sue emerged from Elisabeth, but this misuse, this doubling-up, of the Substance kills Sue.
Monstro Elisasue goes on to give one hell of a New Year’s Eve performance that the audience won’t soon forget just before dying a grisly death.
TERMINATION
The Substance is a body-horror film about the internalized fears of an aging body, the impossible double-standards our patriarchal society has placed on women to maintain their beauty, the disappearance of a woman once she ages past her prime (imagined or otherwise). These are certainly the things that the movie is about, but I personally couldn’t stop thinking about family dynamics and mother/parenthood.
Elisabeth is a single mother, becoming so later in life after putting her career first. Her daughter Sue is a spoiled, narcissistic brat, literally leeching off her mother to the point where Elisabeth becomes resentful having given everything for her; Sue is utterly unappreciative of all that Elisabeth’s done for her and disrespectful of the boundaries set for them to be able to co-exist. Elisabeth, drained of youthfulness, tries to kill her daughter and take back control of what’s left of her life. While going through with this last act of violence, she comes to her senses - perhaps out of love, or remembering that they are one, or maybe even just a sense of pride of her daughter’s successes - and revives Sue. Sue turning around and killing Elisabeth is a final fuck you to her mother, and the birthing of Monstro Elisasue is the personification of familial/generational trauma.
(I’m always going back to trauma!)
While that crazy last 15-20 minutes was happening, this is what was going through my head, but it seems to me like no one else had the same reading of it at all, so two thoughts to that point:
This was so obvious it didn’t need even need to be mentioned.
This has nothing to do with anything so why even bring it up?
I suppose I’m fine with either, it just feels good to finally get that all out of my head, but that’s as far as I’m going to go exploring that.
…and for the record, I really enjoyed The Substance.
Current Mood: Anxious
Listening to: Wolf Alice - Heavenward