Substance in the first place and in the conceptual sense, it is a superb presentation of the nightmare of dysmorphia, that is, a serious mental disorder and the endemically widespread inability to have a realistic image of one's own appearance (and shape).
It is always better for the film to be good in terms of craftsmanship, kinesthetic, content and ideas (best, of course, for all four items), but sometimes it is enough that, despite possible shortcomings, it reaches the level of a more permanent mark in the minds of those who watched it. and it's even better (after all) if it also manages to start some controversy, and it happened strictly within the circles of devotees, lunatics, compulsives, cinephiles... On the other hand sides, it happens and, fortunately, it happens more or less regularly that even from this easily observable and increasingly disastrous movie and cinematographic lack of ideas, films emerge that hit all the targets listed above, achieve all the goals just listed, at least to some extent and with the expected bumps in those aspects.
The freshest sample of this type has recently been part of the repertoire of i cinema in Serbia - horror-drama Substance (The Substance), a director who is equally trusted by festival selectors/programmers and fans of more atypical films of that type. Her name is Coralie Farzea, and she gained attention and "credits" from icon lovers with the film Revenge from a few years ago, and the new film, premiered with a lot of fanfare and general excitement in the Main Competition Program of the Cannes Film Festival, she made in English, in a British-French co-production and with three well-known Hollywood actors at the head of the cast.
Genre-wise, Substance can quickly be defined as horror, namely body horror (body horror), and the first association with that microgenre would be the earlier works of the famous David Cronenberg (although there were Cronenberg's returns to "those waters" - for example in the films Naked lunch i Existence), but this does not exhaust the kind of genre and sub-genre confusion on which the aforementioned film is based. Namely, Substance it also represents a fairly obvious combination/"cross" of motifs from the stories of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde on the one hand, Dorian Gray on the other, and Mephisto on the third. And then that's not all - more stubborn and petty connoisseurs of genre and intra-genre finesse in Substances also recognized the borrowing from the, admittedly extremely inept Italian screen adaptation of the comic there (also published in our country) Satanik, there since the end of the sixties. And then it should be added that in the eyes and evaluations of the same or at least related and like-minded people, this film can be marked as a contemporary outgrowth of something that the new political correctness, at least on the level of vocabulary and semantics, officially no longer tolerates, and that is the backwater called hegsploitation (hagsploatation), which is a label whose authors, for a large part of the seventies, were exploitative towards the motif of supposed personal dramas and psychological (and then physical) breakdowns of older/more mature women, for example in the case of a hit Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?. And that's not the end of this anamnesis, because, apart from Cronenberg, in Substance are the most noticeable influences, inspirations and appropriations of the poetics of the proven B king of body horror, Frank Henenlotter, recognizable by his achievements Brain Damage, Basketball Houses, frankenhooker, Bad Biology... And before moving on to other aspects of the analysis Substances, let's mention that some quickly recognized and skilfully inserted a reference from the domain of scenography - the corridor in the television studio through which both "heroines" pass on several occasions. Substances it's actually a conscious/deliberate variation and homage to the floor covering we remember from the hotel scenes in Kubrick's (and King's) Radiating.
And this time, all of this can be brought under this millennial and postmodern flair and approach, and Farze presents his harmonious, balanced and drinkable gibberish in the form of a rather simple and straightforward dramaturgically treated story about a television star who, on his fiftieth birthday, is fired from his own long-running TV shows with aerobic exercise (therefore, with another nod to the cinematic and broader eighties!), so that in that identity and existential slavishness she would agree to a cryptic experiment, that is, a mysterious self-rejuvenation therapy from the very black market. After the first treatment, she gets her alter ego embodied in the physical sense - a young woman of impeccable beauty and similar affinities (this transformation brings, all in accordance with the heritage and expected relapses of the said subgenre, perhaps the most shocking and effective scene, let's call it that, of self-birth, during which from the spine of the despised-rejected actress/TV star, a new human being arrives into the world - her refreshed, rejuvenated and improved partner). Miraculously, the basic dramaturgical flywheel will soon arrive in the form of an increasingly open, harsh, even more eyeless color for dominance in the real dimension of living between two "physical roommates", each of whom has five days of being among other people. In a narrative sense, Substance represents a striking step forward (of course, forward) in relation to the essentially effective one Revenge, which suffered under the burden of an overly rudimentary plot (although it was a precise reflection of what the chosen subgenre of rape'n'revenge horror - rape and revenge - entails and inevitably and perhaps even irreparably carries with it), because in his new film, and the new extravagance within the sphere of arthouse and festival film productions, she clearly shows greater confidence in leading and debunking the story, with a visibly more skillful introduction of new motifs, sub-themes and the story and accompanying careful changes in the rhythm of the narrative. On the trail of that observation, it is certainly easy to make a firm judgment that yes Substance and in the mentioned aspects, but also seen as a whole, it shows progress in terms of craftsmanship, and security in the field of placement and synchronization of various ideas.
What then is the problem, that is, where exactly can one map the reasons and grounds for polemics about what was seen, suggested in the opening paragraph of this presentation? Simply, with all its charm, with all the smoothness of expression, with all that sovereignty in the craftwork, with all the thoughtfulness and articulation, and with the possible ballast of an abundance of ideas, which in turn come from the fund of items and solutions well known to closer connoisseurs and admirers of the genre, somewhat confuses the umbrella approach in this feature-length directorial episode as well. simpler, Substance moves along the same path as i Revenge - Korali Fargea openly imitates the settings and style of authors from previous eras, who, by force of circumstances and, alas, again due to a mere lottery of fate, worked and created in significantly lower production (therefore, also budget) leagues, and then translates them into more relaxed ones the sphere of contemporary arthouse film, adding a dimension of glamor to them (in the form of highly emphasized aestheticization in all aspects perceptible to the viewer's eye and ear), which then actually gentrifies daring and "naughty" films from the fringes, long sidelined and often stigmatized even with the often offensive label of thrash film. Then a general question arises - if in the urbanistic sense, gentrification is a questionable approach and process in the long run (and in this domain, in a few steps, you get from the diagnosis of gentrification to the conviction for urbicide), is it fair and meaningful to show more understanding for the authors? who use the same creative shortcuts in the field of art and/or popular culture, all for the ultimate results of such action, and this is exactly the case with Substance, they read the presence of gift, spirit, and concept, and then craftmanship significantly above the current genre average, or even above the genre average?
On the next cup in question Substances we have enough that is undeniable - the superb design of the film, the excellent and brave roles of both Demi Moore (perhaps in the role of her entire film career so far) and the young Margaret Quolly (daughter of Andy McDowell, with whom Moore played forty years ago in Fires of Saint Elmos), which instinctively balanced the essential complementarity of characters that share the same existential dimension, then genre consistency and the already emphasized referentiality and quotability, as a subtle "wink" to ambitious connoisseurs of film horror...
It's true, there is something to complain about - still, it's excessive in terms of length (as much as 140 minutes, and horror at least taught us economy in that aspect), the persiflage acting creation of Dennis Quaid, in the role of the eyeless and mindless head of the TV station , there obviously positioned at the height of a too hastily and superficially designed exponent of destructive male toxicity, which nevertheless leaves the impression that it comes and occasionally appears from someone else and of a different film... However, with all that said, Substance in the first place and in an ideological sense, it is a superb presentation of the nightmare of dysmorphia, i.e. a serious mental disorder and the endemic widespread impossibility of a realistic image of one's own appearance (and shape), as, should it be emphasized, the obvious fruit of a life in the grind of imposing the concepts of untouched beauty, imperishable youth and new and even newer life opportunities regardless of age and evident deterioration of the body/physique. And above all, a big and unreserved THANK YOU to Coralie Farzea (who is also the screenwriter of this film).
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