Demi Moore stars as Elizabeth Sparkle, an actor whose shine is dimming because of her age. Facing the axe from her TV job, she turns to a new drug, The Substance, which claims to slow down the ageing process, but it has consequences she could never have imagined. Also starring Margaret Qualley and Dennis Quaid, this provocative film is written and directed by Coralie Fargeat, whose 2017 film Revenge shocked and surprised audiences. We spoke to Fargeat to find out more about The Substance.
The film is shocking, thrilling, and made me so angry when I thought about the unrealistic expectations that we, as women, face every day. Where did the idea come from?
It came from the whole journey I had as a woman since a very young age to nowadays [in] my 40s and how I felt that something was wrong. I felt that I was never meeting the expectations that I had to meet. When you are younger, you stress about different things like you are not thin enough, or your boobs are not big enough, or you should be like this or that. When you pass a certain age, there’s a fear of getting old and losing all your worth in society. I had this with me my whole life in a powerful way, but it never got to be expressed or articulated. I lived with it, but I don’t think I was able to express it. I think I reached a point in my life where I felt okay saying that’s enough. I don’t want to be a victim of that anymore. I want to try to feel good about myself and show the world what they are doing to me and us generally.
Demi Moore is incredible in the film and so fearless. How did you know she was the right actor to play this part?
To be honest, when her name first came on the table, I thought she would never go for a part like that. I thought she would never want to confront the themes that are specifically sensitive for an actress. When I heard that she responded positively to the script, I was super surprised. When we met, I discovered another side of her that I didn’t know from watching her movies. I read her autobiography, which she had written a short time before, and I discovered someone who really went through tough things in her life, especially about how you feel when you start to get older and how people see you. I understood what she went through those years and [what] she overcame. She decided she wanted to get out of feeling bad. She had done a lot of work on herself to feel good about herself and who her true self was. I was also surprised to discover a feminist and an innovative, risk-taking human being. Reading her book, I realised how much ahead of her time she had been with everything she had done, like posing naked when she was pregnant on the cover of a magazine. She really fought by herself in a male-dominated world to be paid as much as her male co-stars. I understood what she had that part would request in terms of risk-taking and challenging moments, and I didn’t know if she had this inside of her. I met her many times, and I understood, okay, she’s someone who can go into those territories. It was important for me to feel confident about that because I knew it was going to be a journey for both of us. We needed to be sure that it was the right move for us to make the film.
Body horror is not a genre that we see many female directors working in. Was it hard to break down those barriers? Were there assumptions that this is not something women should be doing, and did you have to fight to get this made?
Oh yes! Making a film is always a fight, but when you want to deal with these issues in this genre, it’s all the more difficult. I’m confronting themes that everyone is happy to leave under a rug. No one really wants to take that to the surface. I also know that for me, making it in a genre where people can relate is a way to have a great vehicle to express that. The film is very innovative; it invents its own rules, so it’s such a fight to get people on board when you create something that is not exactly in the boxes. You know, in something else, you can tick this box and tick that box; this is it. When you can’t tick that box, you really have to be able to persuade people why this film has to be made. Why is the audience going to react to it? Why is it going to matter? Why is it going to eventually change the world? In the beginning, it’s just a script, and it’s as precise as it can be until the movie is made. Everyone is afraid. Everyone has doubts. No one knows how it’s going to turn out. You really have to fight to get everything you need to be able to put your vision on screen. To me, fighting for what you trust, for your instincts and what your vision is, is part of filmmaking because it is not a given.
Words – Cara O’Doherty