The Fountain of Youth has fascinated us for centuries. Even though there may be a small sliver of truth to there actually being something which may help in the slowing in aging, it still is a subject that media of all types have looked at in one way or another. With The Substance, this goes to a bit of a different place.
Coralie Fargeat (Revenge) directs a cast that includes Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley and Dennis Quaid in the story of Elisabeth (Moore), famous actor and workout star who is getting up her years. When she is offered a secret and revolutionary “treatment” where she can be a new and younger semi-cloned version of herself, she is interested. However, there is one catch: her soul can only be in the new version for a week at a time after spending a week in her current state and while in one version the other is in a form of hibernation. When Elisabeth decides to stretch that time frame, she starts to see the consequences of her actions, and things degrade from there.
This will be a different kind of review for me because The Substance has a mix of many different genres and homages to many iconic films, with the cinematography and set design reminding me of A Clockwork Orange in its many closeups of nonsequential items like a mouth eating shrimp or the syringe while administering the treatment. Except for Quaid who has a small supporting role as a two-faced casting director, this is basically just Moore and Qualley, and even there the dialogue is minimal in a way that made me think of what Tom Hanks did in Cast Away. Given that, I was impressed with how both actresses where able to act as if they were the same person, even as the personality itself changes as the story progresses. Honestly, I could see possible recognition here after the first of the year for both of them in awards season as well as the makeup and other aspects.
Overall, The Substance is very strange, but I liked it as it also encompasses elements of the Saw films and The Neon Demon, even bringing a bit of comedy to the midst of some very graphic situations (seriously, it works). There is a LOT of adult content here including its graphic detail and nudity, and it is long at almost two and a half hours. Even with that, it did flow well, but there is a bit of further editing that would improve it in the final analysis, so I will recommend it to be viewed on a home streaming service.
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