À la Death Becomes Her (1992), French filmmaker, Coralie Fargeat’s second feature film, The Substance, is about a ‘washed-up’ Hollywood star, called Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore), that begins ingesting a magical fluid to once more access the fragile sexual capital of being a conventionally attractive young woman. The consumption of this substance results in Elisabeth’s spine cracking open and her birthing a young and beautiful ‘other self’, Sue (Margaret Qualley). Every seven days, 50-year-old Elisabeth, can switch into Sue’s body, earn the horny praise and affection of every male character that would otherwise disregard her, to then be able to live out her wildest dream: to star in a Jane Fondaesque television workout program, she was sacked from because of her ‘fading looks’. The only catch is, that when these seven days pass, she must revert back to her original body for the same duration of time. This seven-day switch rule is, of course, not abided by.

“the visual catharsis provided by these brief moments of body horror became tedious and dragged out”

Body horror is the perfect genre for this diegesis. The performance of womanhood, beauty and ageing, are all concepts that are especially apt to be deconstructed through visual displays of decompositions and deconstructions of the human body. This pointed stylistic choice, however, is not original to The Substance and it feels impossible to not compare Fargeat’s film to the thematically similar body horror films that have preceded it. In particular, when comparing it to the work of Julia Ducourneau, another French director and a fellow alumnus of La Fémis, whose films have similarly used body horror to explore the constrictions of the female body. In 2021, Ducourneau became the second woman to be awarded the Palme D’or for her body horror film Titane (2021). This was a historic win for genre cinema and The Substance was treated with similar mediatic hype. In the wake of Titane, when I finally got around to watching The Substance, I could not help thinking, is this all?

I have no major qualms with The Substance’s style, as it is as consistently sleek as Sue’s perpetually lip glossed lips. There were particularly memorable gags, one involving a detached boob plopping onto the floor that caused me great delight. However, towards the end of the film’s runtime (which is nearly two and a half hours long), the visual catharsis provided by these brief moments of body horror became tedious and dragged out. Even the film’s most impressive visual moment, its climactic gory finale, felt like it overstayed its welcome, for way too bloody long.

Fargeat juxtaposes the visual horror of Elisabeth’s decaying body to glossy, almost pornographic shots of Sue’s body. Especially, of Sue’s backside, as Fargeat’s shots ogle at this body part at length in various sequences of the film. This parodied male gaze is very obviously, like every element of the film, present in the service of satire. Nonetheless, while watching The Substance, at the Cambridge Light cinema, sandwiched in a seat between two middle-aged men, I could not help finding this method of conveyance slightly dangerous. For, in that instant, I was materially faced with the question that no doubt even plagues Laura Mulvey to this day: What is the line between self-consciously ogling Qualley’s arse and just ogling Qualley’s arse?

This question has been The Substance’s most picked up on criticism. As Hannah Strong writes for The Little White Lies, ‘If Fargeat’s intention is to make the audience complicit, she replicates an existing history of horror’s exploitation of women’s bodies rather than turning it on its head’. This directorial choice is at best lazy in its treatment of this sensitive subject matter, and at worst, materially complicit in the very objectification it attempts to denounce.

The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house point aside, my biggest disappointment with The Substance lies not with this questionably effective, satirical hyper sexualisation of Margaret Qualley’s body. But rather, that Fargeat’s film has been marketed as uniquely divisive, which to some extent, if my friends’ wide ranging Letterboxd scores are a valid cultural thermometer to go by, it is. Nonetheless, this division does not appear to be a particularly titillating one. The principal debates generated by this film seem to boil down to debates about what constitutes clever satire and whether the film is dead dumb or dumb but in a meaningful, patriarchy takedown way.

The Substance did not need to be a revolutionary film. In fact, the best take I heard from a fan of the film after I brought it up in conversation between a mouthful of hash browns over college brunch, was: ‘I like that it’s silly’. This comment perfectly encapsulates the film’s greatest strength. Fargeat’s film has been designed to be what it is says on the can and to be an instantly gratifying experience. It combines and contrasts all of the age-old inciters of visual pleasure with current zeitgeisty politics: boobs and sexism; blood and satire. Its commentary is self-explanatory and accessible to such a heightened degree that any viewer can really surrender to the film’s style when watching it. For me, unfortunately, the film’s stylistic merits were not sufficient, to stop me from eye rolling at its repetitive range and from checking the time on my phone. But I must admit, there is some masterly VFX stuff going on, which depending on your enthusiasm levels in this field, may still make The Substance a worthwhile watch (again, my mind is drawn back to the detached boob…).

“It combines and contrasts all of the age-old inciters of visual pleasure with current zeitgeisty politics: boobs and sexism; blood and satire”

Ultimately, however, for those with stomachs sturdy enough to handle regular close-up shots of syringes piercing into skin, or worse, of a satirically leery, rich film exec wolfing down platefuls of shrimp, The Substance will not be a particularly shocking or memorable viewing experience. On the contrary, The Substance plays it relatively safe with a simple formula and a straightforward feminist message that are already very contemporarily familiar to mainstream moviegoing audiences. This again, is not in itself a crime. But considering Fargeat’s visible ambition of provocation via contentiously pornographic shots of breasts and bums and graphic bloodshed, one feels understandably deserving of a lot more substance.