The Substance

REMEMBER YOU ARE ONE2024 Ranked As soon as I saw the trailer, I knew that this was going to be one of my favorite movie of the year, and damn, I was fucking right. The Walk of Fame star, the producers, the Sue vs. Elizabeth relationship, the bathroom, that chicken thingy, the gore and brutality, the split identity, and that fucking ending—God, everything was just so perfect. The very first shot, a time-lapse of Elizabeth's star just getting more and more damaged, rotting, and being ignored and forgotten by society, reflects the way her career and image deteriorated since she is aging, and show business isn’t nice. Coraline Fargeat made one thing clear: Elizabeth knew very well she was getting older, to the point that she is literally forced every day to pass by a hall full of photos of the younger, "better" version of herself. She knows she has limited time before her career ends. A thing I noticed is that Fargeat captures all the men in this movie as these rude, messy, dirty, and almost grotesque, wild creatures. For example, Dennis Quaid and the infamous disgusting shrimp scene, but also the way he just acts. We see him literally look behind him to stare at a woman's ass, and the comments he makes. He fits with the satirical aspect of this film because he acts like such a cartoony villain, and his overall being is very exaggerated, but still says very realistic things. Another thing the director went out of her way to do is highlight the aging effects on Elizabeth, like wrinkles we would never even notice. But since we see this through Elizabeth's POV, Fargeat uses angles, zooms, and lighting to highlight every single flaw Elizabeth sees in herself. Fargeat said, "Elizabeth, when she is in the bathroom, symbolizes her inner world, and she’s facing herself in a totally non-sexual way. It’s the nudity of who she is, almost as if she’s looking in the mirror at her inner thoughts, and we see all the vulnerability, doubt, and self-hatred that she grew to develop." The bathroom, for me, is like an examination clinic. It’s very minimalistic and very white, like a hospital where they use the color white to highlight flaws or dirt. She uses that in her bathroom to examine herself every day of her life and to stare at every single pore and cell she has. The whole movie is gruesome, but not just for shits and giggles. Again, Coraline Fargeat herself said it better: "The violence that I put on the bodies in the film reflects the violence I feel regarding these issues and the violence we can do to our bodies." The transformation scene of Sue being born represents the lengths people will go nowadays to achieve an impossible beauty standard. Looksmaxing on TikTok is a good representation—it’s full of a lot of people pointing out every single fucking flaw you have, even the tilt of your eyes. Jesus, it even got some people grabbing a hammer and smashing their faces with it to look better. When Elizabeth becomes Sue, although she changes bodies, the mind stays the same, so Sue living her life is just Elizabeth repeating her glory days like she is doomed to the same fate. Demi Moore said that she could easily start her own company, but it’s that feeling of validation she is seeking and the familiarity that dooms her to the same fate. You can see the satisfaction she gets from these validations, the fulfillment she gets. There is a lot about split identities in this. When she finally goes back to the body of Elizabeth, we see that the self-hatred has become deeper and has also evolved into shame and regret for what she is now. She wants more and more to stop being who she is and doesn’t even think that Elizabeth's body is her true identity. And when she is Elizabeth, she blames Sue for abusing the substance balance to show that she completely forgot they are the same person. She uses that as a coping mechanism to escape from her reality. There is also a brief moment where Elizabeth gains the confidence and respect to go out on a date as her true self, but the image of her younger self haunts and torments her and makes her struggle to see her beauty because she is always reminded of Sue. And to deal with her feelings, she does the realest thing to everybody—eat. And then, the next day, we see this symbolic nightmare where the food she ate before is affecting her body, to symbolize that food is her biggest opp because it is, and always has been, a threat to her appearance, which is the source of her happiness, and at this point, the only good thing she sees in herself. It goes to a point where Sue hates Elizabeth, and Elizabeth hates Sue, but it’s because of jealousy that she can’t be Sue, but she is still Sue. I don’t know if I’m making sense, but they all go to these extremes where Sue abuses the balance and extracts more and more fluid and life from Elizabeth, and Elizabeth eats and eats more, and then Sue has to deal with the consequences. Eventually, Elizabeth pulls a Karen and complains and gets remembered they are one, but she is the narcissist, so she tries to end the experiment but fails. Sue tries to kill Elizabeth, but I don’t think she was mad at her for trying to kill her. It’s more symbolic of how Sue resents Elizabeth, and Sue is a representation of that self-hatred she has for who she is—her older self. So, once they are finally separated, the hatred is manifested. But then she gets the consequences, and here, for me, is the best part of this movie, where she starts decaying, and the only thing she thinks of doing to look good is injecting again with the substance. And then we saw what happened. My interpretation was that it was to represent just how impossible beauty standards are nowadays, and even the youngest, most perfect of people will be forced to go to more and more extremes to look better and better. Fargeat said that it’s about what it is to feel monstrous, but then that scene is Elizabeth finally accepting how she looks. When she finally steps on stage, people shame her for what she looks like and attack her, etc. But then, because of all this, she deteriorates. It’s a gory mess, and I won’t say much more, but then in the end, her final form is Elizabeth's face running and forcing herself to finally get to her star of fame—the only happiness she ever had—to go back to the time people respected and embraced her because show business simply didn’t accept a person embracing who they are. But in this scene, she accepts who she is and what she has become, and her fading away—she is finally okay with being and feeling herself.