The Substance (2024)
The Substance, through thought-provoking story and visceral practical effects, incisively depicts the destruction and division that can take place in pursuit of beauty.
The film gets elbow deep into the blood and guts of self-image and how it erodes in the presence of unrealistic beauty standards. Of key interest is the journey women take as they age and observe that the expectations surrounding their appearance remain the same. The opening succinctly conveys the professional trajectory of Elizabeth, played by Demi Moore, through an economic shot which chronicles the, at first pristine installation, then slow weathering of her star on the walk of fame.
Expectations of beauty inherently create division of self and a division of labor. The individual is divided into two versions: "how they see me" versus "how I see me". This is literalized almost immediately when Elizabeth takes a black-market drug allowing her to share two bodies: her current body, and a new, beautiful, and youthful body who she dubs "Sue", played by Margaret Qualley. Sue's birth is disturbing as she climbs out of Elizabeth's bloody back, splayed wide. Sue may as well have been made in a lab to excite men; in fact, she almost was. Prosthetics were used to make Qualley's appearance adhere to an absurd standard, providing further practical commentary about what is considered beautiful and whether or not it is artificial.
As they are reliant on one another, an unsteady relationship forms between these two sides of the same person. This is true to life; the aging and imperfect self must put in much of the labor necessary for the presentable self to exist. This plays out as Elizabeth and her younger self, Sue, quarrel over how to co-function.
The source of the black market drug cautions Elizabeth against this repeatedly: "You are one. Respect the balance." But such a mandate is impossible when the division of self has been driven so far in service of beauty.
The end result is an adversarial internal condition, opening a two-way street of resentment between both versions of the self. This is at first chronicled through disagreement between Elizabeth and Sue over how time and resources are spent by the "other" person. But later this manifests in a startling sequence where both bodies gain consciousness and engage in a violent and kinetically shot fight. Sue kills Elizabeth, who she is biologically reliant on; beauty has won and the old self has been subsumed by something new. Despite the words given by the source of the drug, "Respect the balance," it is plain that there never was any balance. Indulging in the drug of ludicrous beauty standards creates an asymmetric division. The arrangement was never sustainable.
The final act of the film tackles culpability. We spend a great deal of time watching Elizabeth destroy herself. But what's behind all that?
Without her original body to draw from, Sue is living on borrowed time and watching her body break down just before her shining moment on stage. Desperately, she takes the substance again, resulting in the birth of a monstrosity dubbed "Monstro Elizasue". The suit used to create Monstro Elizasue is grotesque, a deranged amalgamation of human characteristics devoid of beauty. We have transitioned from a normal human being to a monster. But the question remains: what force could motivate this behavior?
We are given our answer when Monstro Elizasue takes the stage in a nauseating display; she is met with horror and condemnation by the very crowd who helped to create her. In a reversal of that condemnation, Monstro Elizasue begins spewing blood, covering the entire audience and room completely, making their culpability clear. This scene is remarkable and one of the bloodiest in all horror; someone, somewhere is missing a lot of red food coloring, and Coralie Fargeat just might be to blame.
The Substance is a cautionary tale: seek beauty relentlessly at your own peril, for when you find that beautiful self, the question will eventually arise: "Has she started yet? Eating away at you?"