2024-07-06 23:21:00
Each year of the Cannes Film Festival in France, there is one film that is talked about. Which will become an event whether it wins prestigious awards or not. This year it was Substance. A mix of black comedy and brutal body horror full of body transmutations, it won accolades for its screenplay and the reputation of a film that leaves in droves. How is it really?
In May, the French director Coralie Fargeat wrapped the Cannes audience and the jury around her finger with a work that was supposed to be, among other things, a big comeback for the actress Demi Moore. And indeed, as visitors to the Karlovy Vary festival where Substance can be seen this week could see for themselves: a sixty-one-year-old American woman in the role of an aging TV star is an undoubted magnet for the story of what happens when you ingest a mysterious substance that does a number of unexpected things to your body.
The heroine Elisabeth Sparkle has a program on television that Czechoslovak witnesses would know called Cvičme v rytme. That is, aerobics with girls in one-piece swimsuits, it was once enough to make the audience and TV producers happy. But it is the guy with the giant cigar and the first name Harvey – an obvious reference to the producer Harvey Weinstein – who believes that Elisabeth can no longer be the queen of the screens. And he’s looking for a replacement.
Meanwhile, the heroine discovers that there is a mysterious procedure that would restore her perfect body, youth and everything that belongs to it. There is only one catch. It’s only for seven days. He will have to live the next seven in his original body. And then again, exactly as instructed.
The substance starts promisingly. The extremely aestheticized shots, where we see faces in unpleasant, yet stylized details, for example when the protagonists are eating, or urinating and still talking on the phone, indicate that the director is not afraid to go really physical. And he confirms this when it comes to the very scenes of the transformation into a younger version of himself. The procedure does not only involve giant injections and the necessity of their application, a new part of Elisabeth’s self literally emerges from the original body, leaving a crack on her back that will need to be sewn up every year. Which is still just the beginning.
We’re still on remarkable ground, with Substance acting as a gritty mix of cynical comedy and body horror with a catchy twist of feminist criticism.
The film Substance lacks self-reflection. Pictured is Demi Moore as Elisabeth. | Photo: Aerofilms
Unfortunately, from this moment on, the director has nothing to surprise. And it only increases the intensity of the scenes in which almost every part of the human body suffers some kind of damage. And many previously unknown body parts appear, as young Sue played by Margaret Qualley makes it difficult to keep up with the exact time when she needs to switch back with Elisabeth and let her new body lie in a strange coma on artificial nutrition for a week. Which has consequences.
Substance actually contains only one strong idea: it shows that similar sci-fi plots with rejuvenation or other similar modification of one’s own body do not take the form of some one-time operation that you put to sleep. In this version, on the other hand, the person in question must repeatedly perform a series of unpleasant and painful actions, constantly paying a tax for his own decisions. And get scolded for going against the rules.
The author wants to thematize the tyranny of patriarchy and false ideals of beauty, as well as the related issues of self-hatred and addiction to trying to be a more perfect version of yourself. But the grotesque exaggeration does not drag the whole picture, moreover, these are topics that have been worked on for a long time. Similar forms of self-deception and addiction to television were already told by Darren Aronofsky in the much better film Requiem for a Dream. Thus, despite the formal sophistication of many scenes, the pounding music and the flood of brutality, Substance seems rather outdated, like a relic of the 90s of the last century.
Although Substance works with exaggeration, it takes itself far too seriously to be pure fun junk. Already because the violence and the monstrous transmutations of the body are constantly supposed to be the bearer of some – albeit quite obvious – meaning, which paradoxically takes away their power.
When someone smashes someone’s face into a bloody mess against a mirror for tens of seconds, there is no need to immediately be offended. However, if it is supposed to be an illustration of female jealousy or envy caused by the dictates of the ideal of beauty, then it is at least unintentionally comical, even annoying in its literalness. All metaphors need to be slapped in the face of the audience here – literally.
Sometimes a bit of the trashy violence comes out of the film, combined with the necessary portion of the grotesque, as well as great realistic tricks that do not rely on digital magic, but on manual work.
The ending is endearingly exaggerated, and the blood gushing endlessly has a liberating dimension at last, although even here the picture does not exceed the dimensions of an artfully aestheticized brak. Rather, we can cautiously applaud that the creators have finally acknowledged their B-level roots.
At the same time, there are many works that can transform violence, blood and disgust into truly transgressive experiences. For example, the director David Cronenberg also observes various mutations and transformations of bodies – but with a remarkable non-participation, in order to let the audience experience them along with the protagonists and force them to think about what they are seeing.
In the light of similar work, Substance seems like a completely empty film that does not really require thinking about the audience, however much the creators probably hoped it would. Although it masquerades as a comedy and contains a few good gags, it wants to be a recognized “artist”. At the same time, it is a work of guileless and simple self-reflection.
In the end, the biggest joke is the prize from Cannes for the screenplay, clearly the weakest part of the film.
The film Substance will be shown in Czech cinemas by the distribution company Aerofilms. | Video: MUBI
French authors, who like to provoke and play with genres, did not do well this year in general. Even the director Bertrand Bonello in his new sci-fi The Beast, loosely inspired by a short story by Henry James, did not transform the bold genre, formal and narrative spirals into a fruitful form.
Actors Léa Seydoux and George MacKay meet in different time planes and experience different types of love relationships in this film about traveling through past lives, which is also showing at the Karlovy Vary festival these days.
Léa Seydoux and George MacKay in the movie The Beast. | Photo: Carole Bethuel
The result is a kind of essay, a mannerist walk through the history of French cinema, revealing everything Bonello knows – from the period costume conversation, in which you can find the work of Éric Rohmer, for example, to the postmodern deconstruction of the film world in the spirit of Leos Carax.
But the author of the wonderful Holy Motors Carax, whose films seem to take place inside the cinema itself, is just an unattainable role model for Bonello.
Bonello bounces from stories of passion to contemporary forms of toxic masculinity. And it is characteristic of his film that it really entertains or generally evokes some stronger emotions only when several scenes from Harmony Korine’s Waterfall Riders appear on the computer monitor at the same time.
The few seconds of this deliberately filmed provocation about fake retirees who like to copulate with garbage, filmed on an old VHS format, will bring more joy than Bonello’s lengthy browsing through the history of French cinema.