The substance
Elizabeth Sparkle is a TV star on a morning fitness show that she has hosted for many years, apparently rich and happy until the producer of the show, a vulgar man, decides that she will be replaced as host by a young girl.
She is inevitably offered to try a top secret experimental protocol called The Substance, which promises to give her a "better, more beautiful and perfect" version of herself.
Accepting will lead her inexorably to ruin.
"The Substance" is a Body horror film written and directed by French Coralie Fargeat. Acclaimed at the Cannes Film Festival, it is sweeping awards and nominations and is a box office success with 65 million dollars grossed globally and is bringing the somewhat tarnished star of Demi Moore, an icon of 90s American mainstream cinema, back into the limelight.
The price we are willing to pay to be beautiful and young, this is the theme of the all-female horror film of the moment, which takes the events to their extreme consequences arriving at a shocking ending.
Body horror, a genre where the horror comes from the repugnant alteration of bodies, how can we not mention cults like "The Fly" by David Cronenberg or "Society - The Horror" directed by Brian Yuzna.
I really liked the first part where we have fun with a truly surprising Demi Moore until the clone enters the scene, then the film descends into the most vulgar and useless vulgarity with long and repetitive scenes of erotic gymnastics. Even if the general idea of the film is certainly not original, the photography and the scenography are fascinating but in the second part the film veers towards
Trash, disgusting and interminable with its two hours and twenty minutes of agony. A missed opportunity! It could have been an interesting film if made sensibly.
