The Substance

I LOVED the way the director used and exploited oversexualization and the male gaze to the point of making it grotesque. The way she drives the point home with the food. How those dishes that are supposed to be delicious and appetizing end up being disgusting, the same goes for sexualization. I found the monster theme completely ingenious, as it perfectly retracts this deep-rooted ideology that women must always be young and beautiful, so much so that they end up undergoing plastic surgery to the point where they end up deformed. Society forces women to mutilate themselves to meet beauty standards, but hey, somehow women with cosmetic surgery have less value and if the surgeries don't have a good result, they are seen as "monsters" in society. Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley are simply fantastic, and Coralie Fargeat is a complete genius.