“The Substance” burns a single idea for two hours and 20 minutes, and narratively it burns to ashes by the 40-minute mark. It’s easier for a movie to become a talking point that way. The film festival buzz that “The Substance” enjoyed when it premiered at Cannes tends to come from movies that dictate a point of view, early and often, rather than throwing a bunch of complementary or even contradictory ideas at each other.
The Cannes buzz around Demi Moore is another matter. The film probably wouldn’t work at all without her, and doesn’t really work with her, because she’s so much better than her subject. The technique and sly emotional detail that Moore brings to “The Substance” East the substance of the film.
French writer-director Coralie Fargeat has created a fairy tale about the miraculous but horrific rebirth of a woman’s career. Moore plays Elisabeth Sparkle, 50, a former Oscar winner and former star, a survivor of a business built on marketing female flesh. For years, she hosted a fairly popular aerobic fitness TV show. But the leg warmers evoke ’80s Jane Fonda, as does Elisabeth. Her producer – a raging maniac played by a raging Dennis Quaid – decides to take the show in a different direction. Something fresher, younger, in the 18-to-30 age range.
Unemployed and alone in her glassy hillside home in Hollywood, Elisabeth discovers a newspaper ad promising her a way to grow a brighter, stronger version of herself. Her miraculous makeover uses a fountain-of-youth elixir, with a difference. After taking the substance, Elisabeth grows Thing Two inside her, who emerges during a messy and painful birth as a fully formed star-in-the-making ready to go. The newcomer, nicknamed Sue, is played by Margaret Qualley.
Her new self lands the job of substitute presenter on the fitness show. Meanwhile, the secret management of the scene involving Elisabeth and Sue sharing the same planet is awkward at best, disastrous at worst. The two Elisabeths must stick to a strict weekly schedule, one week on, one week off, taking turns locked in a closet, hooked up to a life support system (the film gets bogged down in a lot of tedious explanations of this). It’s Fargeat’s most subtly damning idea: patriarchy can’t accommodate more than one side of a woman at a time.
The elder Elisabeth realizes that the younger Sue is having fun, or at least getting all the admiration she deserves, so she starts playing around with the drug treatment. It turns “The Substance” into a cautionary tale about envy—in this case, self-envy, which is a category of narcissism almost too rich for the industry Elisabeth knows so well. If the film sounds strange and invigorating, well, the trailer gives that away, too. But it’s a rather laborious film, asking the same two questions throughout. What price for beauty? What price for Hollywood?
Fargeat and his cinematographer, Benjamin Kracun, treat Hollywood as a sleek, creepy collection of long hallways and fisheye shots. It’s a look, or a collection of looks and influences, without a keen sense of provocation beyond its explicit body horror. For investigations into female trauma in the name of beauty, and women’s bodies as both metaphor and vehicle for desire, I’d take the films of Jennifer Reeder without hesitation. Or “Raw,” a terrific 2016 debut. report by Julia Ducournau which incorporates zombie cannibalism into a coming-of-age story set in veterinary school.
The nudity in “The Substance,” frank, female-centered and completely unbiased, doesn’t flinch or glamorize, at least not without a price. In her director’s statement, Fargeat explains that her film “is about women’s bodies. About how women’s bodies are scrutinized, fantasized, criticized in public spaces… and how women can’t escape it, no matter how educated, strong and independent they are.”
Unfortunately, and especially for a satire-tinged nightmare, there’s very little wit. Moore fills in the gaps with convincing nonverbal passages of despair, discovery of the new her, or jealousy on the verge of revenge. She’s captivating in a way the rest of the film isn’t, transcending the thesis points and comic exaggerations simply by playing against the comic extremes and always keeping a card or two up her sleeve. She reminds us here how good and tough she is at her best, when she’s given the slightest chance.
And now it’s time for her to get a whole one.
“The Substance” — 2 stars (out of 4)
MPA Rating: R (for violent and bloody content, gore, explicit nudity and coarse language)
Duration: 2:20
How to watch: Currently in theaters
Phillips is a Tribune critic.
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