Qualley and Moore Blasts Industry Standards on Beauty in The Substance

For centuries, Hollywood has been obsessed with youth on the internet, television and film.  Social media apps are full of younger woman doing makeup and clothing hacks making most feeling less than and filling the need to achieve perfection by any means necessary.

Demi Moore delivers a career-best performance as Elisabeth Sparkle, a TV aerobics queen who is kicked to the curb by her network as she hit her milestone 50th birthday. No longer fresh-faced in the eyes of her shallow TV exec boss, Harvey (Dennis Quaid), Sparkle confronts her fate as an aging Hollywood star. A one-time Academy Award winning actor who fears her youthfulness and beauty fading, she hears about an experimental black market beauty procedure that promises to put her in touch with her younger – and therefore better – self. It inspires her to take a bold leap into the unknown.

Through a series of phone calls and back alley deliveries, Elisabeth literally births a fresher version of herself, Sue (Margaret Qualley). This perky young clone has ambitions of fame and super stardom that far outweigh Elisabeth’s fading career. There’s just one hitch. Elisabeth and Sue cannot co-exist at the same time and must follow a strict body-sharing regimen lest complications arise.

Qualley has leapt out the box with this character taking her artisty to another level matching Moore.  Both actresses embrace bold, in your face characterizations of aging in an industry where beauty and fame fades in a heartbeat.

Directed by Coralie Fargeat, the film opens with an interesting montage of Sparkle’s rise to fame simply by virtue of watching her star on Hollywood Walk of Fame go from shiny and new to cracked and damaged.  Fargeat gives us many double entendre moments like speak loudly to Elisabeth’s state of mind without one word being uttered – like witnessing water go down the drain as symbolism of a career careening into obscurity.  It’s also not lost that she wears a yellow coat, which for me symbolizes her hope of reclaiming her youth, beauty and stardom.  Or the moment where Sue’s bedsheet goes from idealistic innocent pink to black.

Moore is epic in a cooking scene of French cuisine with an interview of Sue playing in the background as she realizes the disrespect for age through the selfishness and shallowness of her younger self  begins to take over.

As Etta James’ ‘At Last’ plays in a background fantasy segment where Elisabeth beleives she is being welcomed back into the fold, even the audience begins to feel empathy for this clearly bright, enterprising talent who has succumbed to the fake embrace of the entertainment industry.

Production designer Stanislas Reydellet does wonders with this entire film and should be lauded and applauded loudly.

The Substance ultimately begs the question of how much substance and character does one need to survive in an industry that makes aging and beauty feel like a crime only when it involves women.  The double standard is real and hopefully this film will put us all on the road to redemption.