The Substance review: 'thrillingly sick and twisted' satire

For much of the 1990s, Demi Moore was one of "the biggest female box-office draws in Hollywood", said Alistair Harkness in The Scotsman. But then, in 1996, her career was unfairly derailed by "Striptease": though the film did well at the box office, the critics hated it. 

Add in the relentless "physical scrutiny" she'd been subjected to since her breakthrough in "St. Elmo's Fire", and you can see why the writer-director Coralie Fargeat thought her "perfect casting" for "The Substance", a satire that "takes a flame-thrower to the misogynistic beauty standards of the entertainment industry – and has plenty of fun doing it". 

Moore plays Elisabeth Sparkle, "a once in-demand Hollywood actress whose latter-day career as a Jane Fonda-esque exercise guru" comes to an end when she is fired by her repugnant boss (Dennis Quaid). At a low ebb, she takes a drug that promises to generate a younger, more beautiful version of herself (played by Margaret Qualley). The "conceptual twist to this Dorian Gray-like premise" is that both versions of her share a consciousness, and must alternate weeks in the world – which leads to "all hell breaking loose". "Thrillingly sick and twisted", this isn't a subtle film, but it has an unexpectedly poignant ending, and Moore is superb. 

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Be warned, said Wendy Ide in The Observer: the film is "gut-churningly visceral". But it "plunges us into the deranged, disorienting emotional carnage of menopause in a way that few other films have". 

I found it "puerile" and "intellectually specious", said Kevin Maher in The Times. With her endless close-ups of Qualley's bum, Fargeat wants us to think that she is "bravely satirising the 'male gaze'". But she is still fetishising the female body; I don't buy the idea it's different because she is a woman.