By MICHAEL GINGOLD
A dynamic and meaningful achievement in the horror genre, writer/director Coralie Fargeat’s THE SUBSTANCE is as full of shocking and scary moments as it is suffused with thematic purpose. It opens theatrically from Mubi this Friday, September 20, and is a must-see for any fan of both frightful and adventurous cinema. RUE MORGUE got words with Fargeat, who made a striking entrée into the fear field with 2017’s REVENGE, about this even more startling follow-up.
THE SUBSTANCE gives Demi Moore a game-changer of a role as Elisabeth Sparkle, who was once a major Hollywood player but has now been reduced to hosting a TV exercise show–and discovers that her days there are numbered. Desperate to retain some hold on some kind of stardom, she learns of “The Substance,” a secret drug program that promises to reinvent her. It turns out that The Substance literally leads her to be reborn as Sue (Margaret Qualley), a younger, fitter alter ego with whom Elisabeth will alternate weeks–one out and about, the other dormant. But when that rule winds up broken, the ramifications are frightening, bizarre and grotesquely visceral, incorporating a cavalcade of prosthetic effects supervised by Pierre-Olivier Persin. Co-starring Dennis Quaid as Elisabeth’s sleazy producer/boss Harvey (wink wink), THE SUBSTANCE is as outrageous as it is gripping, while having a lot to say about how women and their bodies are viewed by Hollywood and society at large.
Was THE SUBSTANCE inspired by any specific experiences you’ve had or people you know have had, or just by general observations about Hollywood and the way it treats women?
It was totally inspired by my own experience and what I was feeling as a woman, going through my 40s and approaching my 50s. And, of course, everything I was seeing around me with women facing the same issues, and how I think society is still structured in a way that is very problematic regarding those issues.
To me, it’s a story that is not really about Hollywood, but about what every woman has to face regarding those matters. They are quite complex, but if I could summarize them, I would say that it’s about how when you are a woman, your body and what you look like projects a lot onto you, and you have to kind of build yourself to meet those expectations. All of that can lead to the creation of your own jail of self-hatred, feeling that you’re never good enough because you don’t look like this or look like that. You’re not going to be worth being seen or being loved, or just to exist. It’s like, there is the outside, the surface that you see, and the movie is about what’s underneath the surface, and what we experience behind closed doors.
After the success of REVENGE, were you courted by Hollywood?
I did have a lot of meetings, because REVENGE was quite successful, so I was lucky to get a lot of attention from that. But I knew that I wanted to keep developing my own path as a filmmaker. And even if my stories are very much grounded in the more American side of cinema, I really want to keep my own vision of bringing a story to life, and that’s why I decided to keep one foot in Europe, in France, while also working with everything that the American industry has to bring to a film.
This is a different movie, visually, from REVENGE. It’s more composed, even as the material is very extreme, so can you talk about your stylistic approaches to the two films?
I would say yes, THE SUBSTANCE is very different because it has a bigger scope, and also a bigger budget, which allowed me to do more things and incarnate more of my ideas. I wasn’t allowed to develop that as much on REVENGE, which was a much smaller film. But I would also say that the visuals are the way I love to tell my stories, and in both films, there is not much dialogue, because the way I build a story is much more through images, sound and the sensations I bring to the audience. That’s a huge part that I feel is similar in both movies, but in this one I was allowed to go much further and create a much wider universe and go deeper in how I could address things.
How much of THE SUBSTANCE was filmed in Hollywood, especially Elisabeth’s house?
Nothing was filmed in Hollywood. We shot 100 percent of the movie in France. Cinema, to me, is the art of illusion, and that’s what I really enjoy when I make my films, to be able to cheat stuff. So the house was entirely shot on a set, on a stage. A huge part of our prep was deciding how we were going to recreate the view of Hollywood [from Elisabeth’s large window]. It was a major research-and-development thing, thinking about different techniques and finally using the one that would give the most life and the greatest sensation of being inside the location.
We were also building the Hollywood of the movie, because the idea was not to recreate it realistically. It was, on the contrary, to create my version of Hollywood, the one that we all have in our unconscious minds. Like, even if someone has never been there, they still have an image of it, you know? And that was the idea, to be not totally realistic but have a kind of enhanced vision of Hollywood that fit the story.
The role of an aging actress was likely to hit home with anyone you approached to be in it, so what was the casting process for Elisabeth, and how did you Demi Moore wind up with the part?
I knew this was going to be the toughest part of the film, because it’s the strongest but at the same time the scariest part to go for as an actress, because it kind of hits your own phobia. The way things took shape with Demi, I believe we met at a time when the movie was right for both of us. I wrote this movie when I was questioning certain things in my life and wanted to address those issues, and I believe Demi was ready to accept a part that was that challenging. I think, and this is just my interpretation, that she was already dealing with that kind of questioning, and she was ready to confront that in a way that was creative for her.
Before we met, I read her autobiography [INSIDE OUT], and I discovered another side of her person that I didn’t know through her films. I experienced the incredible journey she’d had in her life. She really started from nothing, and built herself up alone in a very independent way, in a very innovative way, in a very male-dominated industry. She took a lot of risks. She was ahead of her time in many ways, and was thinking outside the box on many things. I wasn’t aware of that side of her personality, and when I discovered that, I felt she had the resources to really jump into the story, because I knew ir was going to be challenging.
Of course, we talked a lot about what the movie was going to be like, everything I wanted to film, the meaning of everything, and I let her know that she had to be prepared to address all that, because we needed to have a trusting relationship. Demi has very strong instincts, and she’s an extremely intelligent person, and I think she felt it was worth it for her to take the risk. Because, you know, she went outside her comfort zone on this. She came to shoot in France with a director she didn’t know, a crew she didn’t know, making the film in a way that was not the usual American way. And she trusted that there was something here that was worth the unknown territory.
Both Moore and Margaret Qualley go to some very extreme places in THE SUBSTANCE, both physically and emotionally. How did you work with them to get them to those places?
During prep, we discussed a lot about the physicality of the roles for both of them, and I believe they totally embraced the fact that their bodies were going to be their acting tools. So for instance, Margaret really worked to shape her body; for her, it was part of the role to shape this very, you know, Jessica Rabbit sexy-doll body. She trained hard to really go for it, because she understood that it was part of the character, and part of what she was going to craft as an actress: the physicality of how to express everything she had to express in the script. It was the same for Demi in a very different way, working on the vulnerability, and the fact that with no words, but just the body language of how you look at yourself, what you show in that way can be so powerful and expressive and say so much.
I also had a lot of discussions with them about what I was going to film, exactly how I was going to shoot it, what the meaning of it was. Everything was precisely storyboarded, and having this very specific preparation really helped as we were refining our tools, and crafting the language of the film in a way that was super-meaningful. I think you can feel that on screen, that it’s part of the story, part of the craft and meaning that the three of us brought to the film.
Can I assume it’s not an accident that Dennis Quaid’s aggressively sleazy character is named Harvey?
Oh, no, not at all [laughs]! To me, that’s part of the craziness of filmmaking–how with just a first name, you can characterize a whole type of person. It says so much about those stories that we heard everywhere, and then that kind of exploded with this specific figure, and now just this name, Harvey, can represent something that has existed in society on many different levels. I love to work with symbolism, and the symbolism of that name was definitely powerful and strong.
I also love that the film becomes a prosthetic effects blowout in the last half hour or so. Can you talk about conceiving and creating those effects?
From the start, I knew that the prosthetic makeup was going to be a huge part of the movie. I wanted to do it for real, and use the least CGI possible because the movie is about the flesh, about the body, so I knew we needed reality. We needed to be able to feel everything about the flesh. There was a very long prep period with the makeup artist to shape all that, and to craft the evolutions of the makeup and how the body collapses and everything. And at the same time, being able to express the emotion behind it, because the most important thing was that you have to feel for these characters. That was the toughest part, because it’s a very instinctive reaction when you see a concept or a design; it can be brilliant, but if it doesn’t inspire the right emotions, to me it’s not right. So it was a matter of finding the right line between the design and the emotion that it is supposed to bring to the audience.
Was it always Moore and Qualley under those prosthetics?
Well, for Demi, there were a few different techniques. Much of the time you see Demi, it’s her in the prosthetics, and it was about seven hours of application for the most complex makeup. For some of the scenes where we needed her to be extra skinny, we used different techniques, like having a body double for some shots where we couldn’t do it with Demi. It was just a way to keep it real. And for Margaret, yes, she’s the one in the prosthetics, who gives the character its feeling. That is what is powerful about makeup effects: It’s really the actors that give them true life. It was part of the challenge of those long hours of makeup prep, and I think it was worth the time and the pain–it’s tough to be in those prosthetics–but in the end, it brings the characters to life in a way that doesn’t cheat.
Is there anything else you want to say about THE SUBSTANCE, and what you hope audiences take away from it?
I really hope that audiences enjoy the ride and have fun with the movie, because it’s a real rollercoaster to enjoy. At the same time, I do hope it will spark some conversations about the themes of the movie, and bring more awareness about those issues, and that it will stay in people’s minds, and hopefully lead them to look at these things a bit differently. That’s my big hope.
