Alissa Wilkinson wrote:
‘The Substance’ Review: An Indecent Disclosure
Demi Moore stars in an absurdly gory tale of an aging actress who discovers a deadly cure for obscurity.

In Vladimir Nabokov’s 1930 novel “The Eye,” a sad-sack Russian tutor living in Berlin dies by suicide, and then spends the rest of the book skulking around the living — watching, obsessing over their lives. He eventually realizes something bleak: Most of us see ourselves only through the eyes of others, through the stories we think they make up about us from the glimpses they get of our lives. “I do not exist,” the narrator writes near the end of the book. “There exist but the thousands of mirrors that reflect me.”

Something of “The Eye” lurks in “The Substance,” Coralie Fargeat’s mirror-haunted gory fable about fame, self-hatred and the terror that accompanies an identity constructed on the backs of other people’s stares. Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore), the aging star at the center of the narrative, is very much alive, but she might as well be dead when the story starts. A career spent in front of cameras — first as a celebrated actress, and then as a celebrity fitness instructor on a show called “Sparkle Your Life with Elisabeth”— abruptly ends when an executive (Dennis Quaid) decides she’s too old to be worthy of being seen. He gets to decide if anyone wants to look at her, and if he turns the cameras away, does she even exist?

That executive is loud and disgusting and named Harvey, which should tell you a little about the subtlety of this movie, which is to say it has none, and doesn’t particularly want any. He, like most of the movie, is deliberately way, way over the top. “After 50, it stops,” he tells her, through mouthfuls of mayonnaise-coated shrimp, by way of explaining why she’s no longer attractive. Then he sputters when she asks what “it” is.

There are mirrors everywhere in Elisabeth’s world: literal mirrors and polished doorknobs, but also pictures of her in the hallways at the studio and a giant portrait at her house, so that her younger body and face are always looking back at her. Everywhere she looks, there she is, or was — lithe, toned, smiling broadly. Elisabeth is still gorgeous by any sane person’s reckoning (and Moore is in her early 60s), but surrounded constantly by a version of herself with a little more collagen, she is being slowly driven mad.

Relatable, really. We all see too much of ourselves. Ancient women had pools of water into which they could peer, but our ancestors didn’t have scads of selfies lurking in their pockets. They weren’t tagged in unflattering photos snapped by friends. They didn’t have to look at their own faces on Zoom all day.

Our brains haven’t evolved to bear the burden of that kind of self-consciousness. And appearance-altering medical interventions — drugs, procedures, a shot of this, a laser of that — are more accessible than ever. As we stare into these mirrors, we know we could just fork over some money and stop thinking about “it” at all. We’re more able than ever to create an ideal version of ourselves, which is to say the one we think other people want to look at.

This state of affairs has collectively freaked us out, and that includes Elisabeth. She feels her entire existence slipping from her grasp when a few dozen roses and a perfunctory notecard thanking her for her years at the studio arrive at her apartment. (“You were amazing!” the card reads — emphasis on “were.”) But then, she discovers a way to change her life entirely. A stranger quietly tells her about a mysterious treatment called The Substance, which comes in a box full of syringes and liquids. Once administered, The Substance promises that “a better version of yourself” will emerge.

It turns out that’s very literal. Alone in her capacious, tiled bathroom, Elisabeth gives birth (through her back) to a glamorous, nubile younger self (Margaret Qualley), who names herself Sue and auditions for Elisabeth’s former slot on TV. She gets it, of course, because Harvey can barely hold himself back when he sees her shiny pink leotard, her smile, her perfectly rounded rear. The upgraded new show is called “Pump It Up With Sue,” and it is a magnificent hit.

This is a triumph, of a kind, for Elisabeth. But things soon turn twisted. Elisabeth and Sue “are one,” as The Substance’s instructional materials continually remind them, or maybe I should say her. They’re supposed to switch every seven days, but being in Sue’s body garners adoration. So she spends longer as Sue, and Elisabeth starts to wither.

Be warned: This is a very gory and often bombastic movie. The logic is also not airtight, especially when it comes to whether, and how, Sue and Elisabeth share a consciousness. (There’s a fascinating dissertation in here somewhere about theories of mind-body dualism.) It’s all metaphor, though, not in the least bit meant for a literal analysis. That’s an awkward thing to mix into a movie that turns every subtext into text, which means its constant hammering of its points starts to feel patronizing, as if we might not get it. But it’s also quite funny, and the worse things become for Elisabeth, the harder it is not to giggle with glee. By the end, things have become monstrous and mad.

Fargeat and her cinematographer, Benjamin Kracun, apply a deliberately cranked up aesthetic to “The Substance,” which seems to exist outside of space and time. The world in which Elisabeth Sparkle lives feels like a hallucination of Los Angeles, one with Brutalist architecture and almost no people. There’s only one show business studio, apparently, and its interiors feel ripped from the 1980s, while Elisabeth’s apartment was clearly decorated in the 1990s. Yet Sue texts on a smartphone. The point is not hard to guess at, especially with Moore in the lead role, an icon of that era who was often cast in movies as a sexpot.

But “The Substance” is also interested in — perhaps more than anything — what has often been termed the “male gaze,” though that phrase feels reductionist now. The camera here openly ogles Qualley’s body, running slowly up and down her frame, clad and lit in a sharp, shiny way that feels reminiscent mostly of porn. It goes on forever, and it’s uncomfortable, and that is obviously the point. We’ve seen scores of actresses — and, lately, actors — shot this way. But the heightening and exaggerating turns it satirical, the better to remind us what the movies have done to our perceptions of what a body should be.

In the end that’s what “The Substance” does best: not just remind us about the absurd standards for female beauty and the destructive power of celebrity, but turn the mirror back on us. The sharpest critique isn’t about bodies, but about the way we’ve trained ourselves to look at those bodies, and the effect that has on our own. The movie is, appropriately enough, a mirror, and our discomfort reveals our own hidden biases and fears about ourselves. Being older, being famous, being seen, being loved, being usurped by someone younger and hotter — it’s all here. Nothing like a mirror to remind you what lurks beneath.

The Substance
Rated R for guts and gore and nudity galore. Running time: 2 hours 20 minutes. In theaters.

Director Coralie Fargeat
Writer Coralie Fargeat
Stars Margaret Qualley, Demi Moore, Dennis Quaid, Hugo Diego Garcia, Oscar Lesage
Rating R
Running Time 2h 21m
Genres Drama, Horror

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The post Coralie Fargeat – The Substance (2024) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Even when he’s not working with his own material, Alan Rudolph remains one of our sharpest film stylists. In this 1991 featurea somber thriller involving wife abuse and murder in New Jersey, written by William Reilly and Claude Kervenhe does such a good job with the storytelling and the actors that the broadness of the film’s depiction of a working-class milieu doesn’t seem unduly jarring, anchored as it is in an effectively distancing New Age score by Mark Isham. Demi Moore, who also coproduced, stars as the best friend and coworker of a hairdresser (Glenne Headly) married to an abusive layabout (Bruce Willis). If in the past Rudolph has tended to romanticize the sordidness of working-class life (as in Remember My Name and Choose Me), here he seems to be trying to overcompensate with a vengeance, but the fleetness of his camera moves and editing and the strength of his lead actors (who also include Harvey Keitel and Billie Neal as police detectives) keep one riveted to the screen.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

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The post Alan Rudolph – Mortal Thoughts (1991) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

St. Elmo’s Fire, released in 1985, is one of the defining movies of the 1980s brat pack genre. (Along with ‘The Breakfast Club’, ‘Sixteen Candles’ and ‘Pretty In Pink’). Its major stars, slick editing and production and its soundtrack made it a financial (although not a critical) success.

This clasic mid-80’s coming-of-age film revolves around a group of friends that have just graduated from Georgetown University and their adjustment to their post-university lives, the quarter-life crisis, and the responsibilities of encroaching adulthood.

Quote:

IN the realm of films about close-knit bands of school friends, “St. Elmo’s Fire” falls midway between “The Big Chill” and “The Breakfast Club.” Its characters are old enough to enjoy the first flushes of prosperity, but still sufficiently youthful to keep their self-absorption intact. But soon enough, they will be forced to give up their late-night carousing at a favorite bar and move on to more responsible lives. In the film’s terms, which are distinctly limited, this will mean finding a more sedate hangout and learning to go there for brunch.

“St. Elmo’s Fire,” which opens today at the Ziegfeld, has seven attention-getting young stars and a director, Joel Schumacher, whose hardest job is apportioning them equal time. When the story gets in the way of this, it is simply jettisoned; indeed, the film is edited so skittishly that the actors are barely able to complete their sentences, let alone their thoughts. That’s probably just as well. “St. Elmo’s Fire” is most appealing when it simply gives the actors a chance to flirt with the camera, and with one another. When it attempts to take seriously the problems of characters who are spoiled, affluent and unbearably smug, it becomes considerably less attractive.

The film’s persistent, slap-happy bonhomie eventually gives way to adolescent honesty, “Breakfast Club”-style: when the hubbub dies down there are tears, confessions, vows to change and promises of eternal friendship. This sort of authenticity, formulaic as it is, is far preferable to the film’s attempts to touch base with harsh reality. The film’s most embarrassing sequence brings three girlfriends, one a hopeless spendthrift, together for lunch at a soup kitchen. The spendthrift makes fun of one indigent woman and declares, “I’m going to end up a bag lady. Of course, I’ll have alligator bags.”

Another awkward episode aims for cheap satire at the expense of parents who seem no less ignoble or materialistic than their children. And then there’s the young political hopeful who decides to change his political affiliation for reasons of expendiency. “Working for a Republican senator pays a lot more than working for a Democratic congressman,” he explains to his live-in girlfriend. “We could get the longer sofa. And we could get married.” It is this sort of reasoning with which the film is principally concerned.

Mr. Schumacher does a lot with the decor, which shows almost all the characters living splashily above their means, and makes strenous efforts to keep things spinning. But the film’s only real interest lies in the question of which of these actors will, by moving on to more substantial projects than this one, be able to build and sustain their careers. In the case of Rob Lowe, whose irresponsible pretty boy becomes the film’s central figure, a matinee-idol future is assured, and perhaps something more; Mr. Lowe reveals an interesting petulance in some of his less showily emotional scenes, and brings a disarming warmth to the finale. The most unusual actor in the cast is Emilio Estevez, whose very pugnaciousness is so crazily intense it lends itself to comedy.

Judd Nelson, as the character intent on that larger sofa, was the bully of “The Breakfast Club” and is no less overbearing here, though his self-importance occasionally gives way to some welcome humor. Andrew McCarthy affably inhabits the film’s most likable role, that of an aspiring writer who’s the easygoing iconoclast of the group. The women’s roles, which are less well developed in the screenplay by Mr. Schumacher and Carl Kurlander, are those of a garish extrovert (Demi Moore), a trim young professional (Ally Sheedy) and a nice-girl social worker (Mare Winningham). Miss Moore is appropriately loud, and Miss Winningham does a lot with a listless character, while Miss Sheedy manages to show a few flashes of unexpected intelligence and humor.

“St. Elmo’s Fire” is as good a film as any to put into a time capsule this year – to show what and whom young viewers want, and how eager Hollywood is to give it to them.

Good Old Friends ST. ELMO’S FIRE, directed by Joel Schumacher; written by Mr. Schumacher and Carl Kurlander; director of photography, Stephen H. Burum; edited by Richard Marks; music by David Foster; produced by Lauren Shuler; released by Columbia Pictures. At Ziegfeld, 141 West 54th Street; Coronet, Third Avenue at 59th Street, and other theaters. Running time: 108 minutes.

Written by Janet Maslin from nytimes.com

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The post Joel Schumacher – St. Elmo’s Fire (1985) first appeared on Cinema of the World.