The Substance, by Coralie Fargeat. How to make a film out of the filmmaker's brutal despise of the female gender.

"How to Make a Horror Film Out of the Filmmaker's Brutal Disdain for her own Gender .” 

A review of  Coralie Fargeat’s anti-feminist stance in The Substance (2024).

When a friend first recommended The Substance to me, mentioning its thematic association with Dorian Gray, I assumed, perhaps naively, that the protagonist would be male. However, I did not investigate further, and was consequently unprepared for the film's content. Upon viewing the film at the Odeon in Oxford one evening of October 2024, it quickly became evident that the director sought to engage with the tradition of narratives exploring the theme of the "double"—as exemplified in works ranging from Frankenstein to The Picture of Dorian Gray—and construct a “mirror” image to represent duality within the complex identity of a troubled female psyche. And in doing so, she appealed to iconic cult horror films such as Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) and Stanley Kubrick's Shining (1980). The director also integrated a range of contemporary horror visual elements, achieved through modern electronic techniques, reminiscent of films like Fight Club (1999), The Others (2001), Black Swan (2010), Split (2016), Us (2019), Enemy (2013), and The Invisible Man (2020), among others. Yes, we got it, Madam Coralie Fargeat. You can rest assured that we grasped all the intertextual references well enough. And some more.

How many  mad and demonized heroines have we already met in the pages of novels and on the screens, how many witches do we know, contrasted with a beautiful and youthful "double," crafted by the pens of women writers and script-writers: let’s mention the wife of Mr. Rochester, Bertha Mason in Jane Eyre (1847) by Charlotte Brontë, seen as the other  side of the same coin, engaged in a lost fight with the younger protagonist, with both representing two well established corrosive ideas of femininity.The same problem of the “double” appears in Rebecca (1938) by Daphne du Maurier, the unnamed protagonist torn by her insecurity and lack of identity in comparison to the dominant, idealized image of Rebecca, who lingers like a ghost. The young and the old, the beautiful and the ugly, the rational and the mad, the rebellious and the conformist—an endless chain of stereotypes created by patriarchal culture, to which women, even when they are artists, ultimately conform, as seen in The Substance: there seem to be no end to this chain of female monstrosity and unresolvable maladie.

The film director’s message was simple and quite straightforward, to the point that it appears superfluous to summarize it, so narrow it is, yet rather than achieving any meaningful engagement with her treatment of this narrow and time-consumed motif, her film falters by attempting to match this to the stylistic bravado of films like Pulp Fiction, resulting in what can only be described as a too coherent pastiche. I know, Halloween 2024 was just around the corner, and the temptation to cash in at the box office was irresistible. There are scenes in which the two protagonists, who represent the dual facets of the same woman obsessed with the pursuit of rejuvenation at any cost—even resorting to a dangerous substance with irreversible effects—engage in a prolonged and savage fight. The intensity of their struggle is reminiscent of the staged bouts featuring female bodybuilders. But those fights, categorized as "wrestling" and "catfights" in American rings are funny, while this was not: I had to close my eyes and ears. 

Midway, both women become sort of vampires, draining the lymph out of each other. The gothic twist in the story could only be handled by an exorcist, but the young male character on stage, focused on his erotic performance, is depicted as far too weak to take on that all-important controlling role! And what a shame that the long, jagged scar at the back of the older actress’s head inadvertently evokes poor Frida Kahlo—at least visually, for those familiar with her iconic self-portrait! 

Some have called it a “feminist film”! They are still alive and kicking, but if they were dead, Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray would be spinning in their graves for the horror of such a suggestion.

Unfortunately, this amalgamation culminates in a grotesque display of the female body, whose reduction to vulgarity appears to be the filmmaker's only clear undisputable achievement. The sum is a visually unpalatable spectacle, devoid of any aesthetic or narrative merit, in my view. I feel sorry for Demi Moore for having ended like that her long  adventure in XXth cinema as a much respected diva.  It was an act of trust, but utterly misplaced.

As a matter of fact, the viewer is subjected to an unsophisticated blend of soft-core pornography, objectification of the female body, and male voyeurism, all intertwined with a deeply degrading psychological and ethical representation of today's women. The film’s most troubling aspect is its apparent delight in mocking and marginalizing older women, portraying them as narcissistic, self-indulgent, and perpetually embroiled in petty jealousies and deceit. This regressive portrayal is amplified by an emphasis on physicality that reduces female characters to objects of ridicule and derision, rather than multidimensional individuals.

The film's inherent problem is, therefore, not merely its content, but the perspective it chooses to adopt, perpetuating harmful, ageist, and misogynistic tropes, leaving no space for nuanced engagement with the subjects it purports to portray. Some might say, “It’s comical! It’s satirical!” But in the cinema, I didn’t hear a single laugh or even a giggle. So, how many audience members need to laugh for a piece to truly be called “comical”?

What is particularly disturbing is the filmmaker’s decision to criticise certain categories of women—those who embrace their appearance, fame, and autonomy—through a lens of vitriol and disdain. Icons like Madonna, Kylie Jenner, Gwyneth Paltrow, who have unapologetically made personal choices regarding their bodies and identities, become the film’s targets, but they are not offered a thoughtful critique. Instead, they are subject to a form of public shaming, reduced to caricatures in a grotesque and superficial spectacle. Are they victims of their fame? Of the fashion market? Of the culture industry? Of drug dealers? They are—and so are we, both men and women. Got it. Let’s move on.

I do not believe we need to add anything to the infamy that women endure—and I think everyone agrees—but obviously I do not exclude that satire can be made about the world of cosmetics and surgery, or products that promise a real or illusory regained youth. It is an old theme that concerns both genders, the alteration of the body through exercise and cosmetics. It is more an ancient art form than a void obsession, as this director wishes to represent it. 

In fact, there is an essential paradox  in the film's aggressively satirical condemnation of women who want to improve their looks and keep young, particularly when one considers the narrative devices employed by  the filmmaker Coralie Fargeat. Instead of launching an attack that seems aimed at women in general, the director could have adopted a more introspective or autobiographical approach. 

All women who have been part of a female collective know and remember that there are companions and friends who will approach you if you are well-groomed, if you show that you take care of yourself and invest time and money in your appearance. And then there are other companions or (false) friends who will turn up their noses, and as soon as they have the chance, will mock and caricature you for those very same reasons—your relationship with your body, your face, and your style, how you present yourself to the world and to your own mirror. This film, to me, seems crafted by the latter kind of woman. As a female spectator, I felt as though the director was calling upon me to visually joining her sort of street gang, a punitive squad to laugh behind the backs of women who deal uncomfortably with the aging process, seeking remedies described in the film as pathetic, who have an emotional and mental struggle with their declining appearance. How many times in high school bathrooms was there a classmate trying to enforce this marginalizing system against insecure girls who took too much care of themselves! A kind of insecurity which represents a growing portion of women in our contemporary societies as one watches oneself grow up and then age. I do not want to be called upon to turn away my affectionate and compassionate gaze toward other women and myself by the strategies of a mean girls’ film: “Look at her! She wants to be pretty-pretty. Let’s get her! Let’s make her hate herself!' Getting up and leaving the theater is probably one possible reaction when the scene descends into an all-out brawl between the two women, the young and the older, who are, in fact, the same person. Piercing screams and torn flesh!  And I will say no more. 

Had the filmmaker really wished to explore her own mocking views of the fellow women who  have the habit to take care of themselves at their own pace and beyond the “level” she is prepared to accept and respect, and make her radical critiques  less bitchy, she might have employed a first-person voice to frame these derisive perspectives. This technique has been masterfully employed by filmmakers like Federico Fellini, particularly in 8 1⁄2, where Fellini’s critique of masculinity and the male psyche is interwoven with an autobiographical exploration of the director’s own life and experiences. By drawing on his own persona, Fellini avoided making broad or harmful generalisations about gender, offering instead a nuanced self-reflection. There is nothing more refined than using personal anecdotes to make people laugh at some aspects of our shared human frigilities and frivolities. The Substance fails to exhibit any such self-reflexive awareness, and in its failure, the filmmaker becomes complicit in the very misogyny the film critiques, reinforcing the objectification of women without any meaningful examination of her own position within this discourse. I see the personal involvement very much distanced here, as telling: “Hey, look at her, how wretched she is!” 

Moreover, the objectification of women, reduced to mere dolls sacrificed to cinematic voyeurism through an abundance of lingering shots on the actresses’ intimate parts in unexpected scenes where one might even speculate whether the lining of their pink Brazilian knickers is cotton or polyester, is a sudden surprise for all spectators. 'Whoa, hold on a second! What’s happening here?' whispered a man in the third row before standing up and leaving the theater, followed closely by three of his friends, two women and a man. At the bar, after the film had ended, a couple of male viewers, uncomfortable with the role of the male actors, represented as a bunch of stupid delinquents and pervs, stressed, as if it was not self-evident, that the film has been directed by a woman, to suggest that given the author’s sex, I should blame her not men. In fact, the gender of the filmmaker does not mitigate the impact of the film’s offensive content. A work of art must be evaluated on the basis of the perspectives it promotes, not the identity of its creator. What is at stake here is not the director’s gender, but the lens through which she chooses to depict women. The "male gaze" remains present, reducing women to sexual objects, even when it is a woman behind the camera. 

And then, at a certain point, the theme of the “werewolf” appears: the older woman’s skin pulls back, splits open, blood pours out, nails grow, hair becomes bristly, her eye sockets bulge, and her tongue swells, as serum and pus ooze from the wounds! She is punished at last for her inadmissible desire to remain young. She is almost a zombie. Her limbs retract, her arm turns into a kind of decrepit paw... Do not ask for more: you are being served all that is needed for a canonical horror film and you get all that you paid for. 

Such gratuitous violence against public figures, like Jane Fonda, who have merely committed the unforgivable crime of wanting to remain young, further compounds the film’s offensive nature in the filmmakers’ eyes. The brutality depicted is excessive and disturbing, culminating in scenes that are both degrading and dehumanizing. The viewer is left with little more than visceral discomfort, as the violence serves no narrative purpose beyond shock value. Such graphic imagery raises ethical concerns about the filmmaker’s intent and whether these depictions contribute anything meaningful to the film’s broader commentary. 

The Substance is by no means an original story. It belongs to a trend that can be traced back to Greed (1924), where Erich von Stroheim explored the destructiveness of materialism and vanity. One of the central female characters, Trina, becomes obsessed with wealth and material possessions, including beauty products. While the film is a broader critique of consumerism, the depiction of cosmetics highlights vanity and desire, making it part of a tradition in cinema that examines the darker side of beauty and material obsession. And anyhow, the portrayal of women as addicted to cosmetics has been a recurring theme, serving not only to reflect societal expectations of beauty but also to critique the rise of 20th-century consumer culture, which imposes vanity on everyone. In The Women (1939), George Cukor took a satirical look at the lives of upper-class women in New York City, where obsession with fashion, cosmetics, and beauty treatments forms the core of the characters’ identities. The film revolves around the pursuit of perfection, critically examining the superficiality tied to these obsessions while simultaneously highlighting the pressure women face to conform to rigid beauty standards. Fifty years later, Robert Zemeckis's Death Becomes Her (1992), featuring Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn, explored similar themes, depicting women who go to extreme lengths to preserve their youth and beauty. The film focussed once again on cosmetic surgery and the quest for immortality and included a critique of beauty addiction. The characters’ pursuit of perfection at all costs makes this film a sharp satire on the obsession with appearance, echoing earlier themes. A similar narrative appears in Shopaholic (2009), where Rebecca Bloomwood (Isla Fisher) is portrayed as addicted to material goods, most of all beauty products. Her struggle with consumerism and vanity is – how original! – another critique of materialism, with cosmetics standing as a symbol of the protagonistìs unresolved inner conflicts. More recently, Nicolas Winding Refn’s The Neon Demon (2016) tackled the beauty and fashion industry in a psychological horror framework. In this film, the protagonist Jesse (Elle Fanning) is enveloped by a world fixated on beauty and youth, where ruthless competition leads women to rely heavily on cosmetic procedures and beauty products. The film lampooned the extent to which individuals will go to maintain attractiveness, using cosmetics to symbolize the superficiality of wealth and appearances. Like The Substance, this film  critiques the societal forces that push women into extreme grooming routines to meet beauty standards, offering a sarcastical portrayal of the entire beauty and fashion industry. In contrast, the film Legally Blonde (2001) presented the protagonist Elle Woods (Reese Witherspoon) as someone who initially seems obsessed with beauty, fashion, and cosmetics. However, the story luckily subverts this stereotype by revealing Elle's intelligence and capability, challenging the assumption that women who care about cosmetics are inherently silly and superficial. 

In no epistemological framework can one justifiably continue to generalize women as basically inherently frivolous or dependent on substances purported to restore youth, as certain popular myths and literary works keep suggesting. In fact, in folk tales and films, resourcing a powerful “substance” to be illegally purchased is more a male character’s mission than a heroine's one. In effect, female characters, in these stories, are often the witches that prepare those potions like in the film Ophelia (2018), directed by Australian filmmaker Claire McCarthy. The lethal potion is ordered by Queen Gertrude to kill, not to give life. 

The theme of the beautifying elixir often serves as an allegory for humanity's susceptibility to illusion. One such legend, rooted in the concept of vanity, surrounds the historical figure of Johann Georg Faust (c. 1480–1540), who has come to symbolically represent the quest for immortality as a form of self-deception. While the Faustian legend has undergone various interpretations—Goethe’s rendition being among the most renowned—the motif of a transformative substance is not used to caricature one gender at the expense of the other. Instead, it offers a broader reflection on our fragility, not merely in the face of death, but in relation to our very role and purpose in life.

Perhaps the most perplexing aspect of The Substance is the recognition it has received. While I acknowledge that artistic merit is often subject to subjective evaluation, I strongly disagree with the acclaim this film has garnered. As a viewer, I feel compelled to articulate my dissent. While the filmmaker’s freedom of expression is undeniable, so too is my right to criticise the vision she presents. The content of the film is not only regressive but emblematic of a larger cultural tolerance for the objectification and degradation of women. My hope is that future criticism will engage more rigorously with the ethical and moral implications of such works, rather than allowing them to be celebrated uncritically.

 The only element I can  salvage from this spectacle, albeit likely unbeknownst to the director herself,  is a reference we can make to Eugène Ionesco’s play Amédée, or How to Get Rid of It, which revolves around a married couple, Amédée and Madeleine, who are plagued by the presence of a corpse that has been growing in  a room of their apartment and they must take care of, in turn. The decaying and swelling body becomes an overpowering presence, symbolising unspoken guilt, obsessions, unresolved tensions, within a decaying relationship (and in each character). The lying "corpse" to be taken care of serves a symbolic function, forcing the audience to face the weight of wrong choices and repressed anxieties.  Having mentioned that, and despite being an admirer of the “Absurdist theater,” I struggled to find any redeeming qualities in The Substance's overlong, self-entitled display of  carnage, which to me resembled more a butcher’s  blood-soaked white-tiled frigo-room. In this respect, the most ridiculous aspect of the story, which can be seen as comical, is this: who stitched up the spine of the older woman lying on her side? I don’t recall seeing a skeletal-spinal surgeon make an entrance, and the suturing looks like the work of a seasoned professional.

Every creative work, no matter how trivial, nonsensical, and devoid of any philosophical depth, has, or must have, an authorial message—whether the author conceived it or not. So, let’s make one last interpretative effort and try to discern what this author's message is, which can be summarized as follows: "Like it or not, you will become ugly and old, and it’s better if you do nothing to stop your physical decline and increasing impurity, because you’ll only make things worse and end up ridiculing yourself. Accept the passage of time gracefully and stop throwing money at products that do absolutely nothing except enrich those who exploit this market without remorse!" After all, she seems to be saying, only death is the perfect healing for old age. Well, isn’t that message unique?! 

In sum, The Substance represents a troubling example of contemporary cinema’s failure to address women’s issues with the sensitivity and respect they deserve. The filmmaker’s choice to vilify rather than humanise her subjects, combined with the failure to adopt a more introspective and personal narrative approach, results in a film that is grossly misogynistic, ageist, and ethically compromised. Rather than contributing to meaningful dialogue about gender and identity, The Substance stands as a cautionary tale of what happens when artistic freedom is exercised without accountability.

Erminia Passannanti (Oxford, 21 / 10 / 2024)