Upon a second screening of Coralie Fargeat’s incredible opus “The Substance,” there is one thing that stands out. It’s not Stanislas Reydellet’s stellar production design or the exquisite cinematography from Benjamin Kracun that half a dozen young filmmakers and commercial directors will rip off over the next 18 months. Nor is it Emmanuelle Youchnovski’s runway-friendly costume design that will have everyone hunting for a bold yellow long coat for the Winter. Fargeat’s visionary roar at a culture that approximates aging with complete cultural and sexual insignificance? That was apparent the first time around. No, what haunts you on a subsequent viewing is Demi Moore‘s indelible and awards-worthy performance.
READ MORE: “The Substance” Review: Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley switch in a visionary twist on “‘Death Becomes Her” [Cannes]
Set in an intentionally warped version of Hollywood, Moore portrays Elisabeth Sparke, a former Oscar-winning actress who has spent a good decade or so as a daytime television aerobics instructor. When Sparkle hits the magic 5-0, Harvey (Dennis Quaid), the network executive responsible for her program, is so thoroughly disgusted by her age that he uses it as an excuse to retire her. Through a subsequently unfortunate event, Elisabeth is introduced to the mysterious substance that may be the answer to her prayers, an injection that promises a better version of “you.” Desperate for any significance, she orders it and, in a scene that will blow the minds of many, gives birth to an improved copy of herself, Sue (Margaret Qualley). As Sue’s career immediately skyrockets, neither woman is prepared for the consequences of their actions.
Before production began, Fargeat says the most important thing she did was sit down with Moore and be as specific as possible about what the movie was going to be, how she was going to shoot it, and how sound was part of the performance.
“I wanted her to be fully aware of where she was stepping into to be sure that she wanted to take that risk,” Fargeat recalls. “Because the worst thing is when you are on a set and then you don’t have the same vision or you don’t have the same expectation of, ‘Oh, this is what you want to do.’ No, I wanted to go through everything before to be sure that if we were going to work together, we both knew what we were stepping into and the level of risk and commitments that she would have to take. Of course, all the nudity scenes, we discuss a lot. I explained to her everything about how I wanted to shoot that. It was a very precise storyboard. Each shot for me had a meaning. So, I wanted her to understand why I wanted to shoot it that way. So she can then put her own emotional performance in it.”

Fargeat adds, “All the kind of excess of the film like the level of prosthetics, the level of craziness with the food, with the blood, it was very precisely written on the page, but when something is on the page, you can never totally visualize it the way that it’s in the brain. Also, because we were shooting in France in a more indie way, she was going to be far from home with not the huge Hollywood resources or conditions that she was used to.”
In Fargeat’s mind, Moore needed to be there for the right reasons. They had to trust each other. And that might have made all the difference.
“I think that’s what made the movie succeed because we had taken the time to be crystal clear and when I got to know her better, she got to know me better,” Fargeat says. “I think we understood that, ‘O.K., we could trust for us to do that.’ And it doesn’t mean that it was going to be easy every day, but the fundamental trust and understanding of the project was the cement that we needed to go through all of the shooting and do it for the right reasons.”
Ask the Paris-born filmmaker where an idea like “The Substance” came from she’ll smile and respond, “Oh, my life.” Fargeat says she has always been cognizant of our relationship with our bodies and appearance. And depending on what sort of reception you expect from the real world, it can lead to unexpected judgment or scorn. When she hit her forties, those insecurities were exacerbated. She recalls, “I really started to have those super violent, powerful thoughts that, ‘O.K., this is it. My life is over. I am not going to be worth anything anymore. I’m not going to be valued. No one is going to look at me. It’s done.’ And I took a step back and I said, ‘Wow, this is so insane.’ But it is so truly what I strongly feel for real. And I said, ‘O.K., I really have to do something with it because it’s a theme that I have with me.’”
If she didn’t do something about it creatively, then she believes the S.O.S. over getting older that triggered her was so violent it would “destroy” her. After the success of her debut feature “Revenge,” she felt it was time to confront these feelings. And, from a filmmaking perspective, she now had the confidence to take on a more ambitious project such as “The Substance.”
“I wanted the movie to be, first of all, in a non-realistic reality because I work with symbolism in my films,” Fargeat says. “There is not much dialogue. So, I’ll always look for the symbolism that’s going to express the ideas and the themes that I want to deal with. So, here I knew two things. I knew that I wanted to find the best symbol for our fear of not being looked at anymore or not fitting the mold or not losing the attention that you think makes you exist. I like the heightened expression of that. The actress figure who kind of lives under the public eye and kind of gets her sense of love and her sense of self-value from other people’s eyes. And I also knew that I wanted to be able to feel this relationship with the body. What I was going to put on screen would allow me to kind of say it not with words, but show it with images.”
Margaret Qualley in The Substance
That’s where the idea for having Elisabeth and Sue competing in the fitness world came from. Elisabeth’s character is inspired by the legendary Jane Fonda, who began a lucrative side career with fitness videos in her forties. For Elisabeth, it is also a way to keep a bit of that intense spotlight of fame, even if it’s now through a television camera. But Fonda wasn’t her only inspiration.
“I grew up with this Cindy Crawford aerobic VHS with a red leotard that was this kind of symbol of like, ‘O.K., this is what you have to look like to be smiling, to be happy, to be loved.’ And I think it’s a lot of obsessive image in itself, fitness where every body part is repeated, exaggerated, it’s really kind of something that gets into your mind and where you scrutinize yourself through the lens of this perfect representation. So I think, yes, that’s the way it came together. But the idea was really to build a timeless world, which could be giving the idea that what was true yesterday, is true today. I think this will still be true a bit tomorrow. and I think happens everywhere. And the Hollywood in the film is just a symbol of a reality that I think is true in every country basically.”
Even after the success of her first movie, it is remarkable that Working Title and Universal Pictures initially produced and financed the film “The Substance.” And, happily, Fargeat notes her hands were free during shooting because the producers “understood that the project was a vision.” There were no notes because, as she bluntly observes, either you shoot the script or you don’t. Moreover, she felt she communicated that the eventual strength of the final film was that it was “uncompromised” and “faithful to what I wanted to do.” Moreover, her scripts are like novels where every detail is written. Every shot, every single closeup, and the amount of blood is “crystal clear” on the page. And yet, when the executives saw the final result, Fargeat speculates that it was probably more violent than they imagined. The good news was, “It was pretty clear that the intention was not to make me change my film because I think they knew it was not an option and it was not something that was viable.”
She adds, “Then we had to deal with finding another home.”
But Universal Pictures or Focus Features would not be releasing the movie (it’s still unclear if it was even an option for executives at Focus to consider). Despite it seeming like an obvious fit for NEON or A24, the movie became MUBI’s highest-profile acquisition to date. And that was before it debuted to critical acclaim at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, eventually winning the Best Screenplay prize.
“I think the success of the movie was that its freedom was preserved from beginning to end with the help of all the people that I worked with,” Fargeat says. “But yeah, a journey of a film I think can always be tricky. And it’s really navigating the waves and trying to have your boat arrive at its destination no matter what. And sometimes it’s not the road that you are going to take, but I’m the captain of the boat and I have to drive it all the way until it’s arrived.”
“The Substance” opens semi-nationwide on Friday.