Body and space: the architectures of terror in The Substance

Premiering at the 77th Cannes Film Festival, where it received a thirteen-minute standing ovation and won Best Screenplay, The Substance is the second feature film by French director Coralie Fargeat.

Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore), a fading Hollywood star whose character blends elements of Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard (1950) and Jane Fonda’s aerobics era, is unceremoniously fired on her fiftieth birthday by Harvey (Dennis Quaid), a sleazy studio executive with a penchant for ogling women. He eagerly plans to replace her with a younger, more “marketable” starlet – what alpha-male lingo might reduce to “fresh meat.” Elisabeth stumbles upon a mysterious substance that enables her body to create an alternate version of herself: the “younger, more beautiful, more perfect” Sue (Margaret Qualley). Sue immediately usurps Elisabeth’s role, hosting the fitness show. The caveat is that the two bodies must alternate weeks in control, each fully aware they share a singular identity.

In The Substance, Fargeat draws deeply from film history, crafting a layered architecture of terror that emerges from the female body and extends through television studios, homes, hallways, bathrooms, showers, and hidden rooms.

The story begins in the TV studio: after her last aerobics class, Moore’s character walks through a hallway that serves as a meta-commentary on her career, including the infamous “Grandma Duck” hairstyle from A Few Good Men (1992). The posters set against vivid, saturated orange walls evoke her career milestones, while the geometric floor patterns recall the foreboding hallways of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980) – which also featured Jack Nicholson, as did A Few Good Men.

Once again, The Shining lends its visual language to the studio bathrooms, where glossy whites clash with visceral reds. This clinical, relentless whiteness reappears in the bathroom of Elisabeth’s home – a stark contrast to the rest of her apartment. Through carefully framed shots, particularly the shower scene, and the twisted posture of Elisabeth lying on the floor post-Sue, Fargeat invokes Psycho (1960), Alfred Hitchcock’s quintessential film on duality.

The bathroom serves as a claustrophobic cocoon, where Elisabeth confronts her own image, scrutinizing her aging face and body under the punishing standards imposed by a society that glorifies youth (despite the lip service of #bodypositive). It’s here that Sue carves out a secret room, as dark as the depths of the unconscious, where she hides the decaying Elisabeth, who degenerates into a Gollum-like specter.
 

The Kubrickian influences continue: the brutalist architecture of the hospital transports viewers to the dystopian London of A Clockwork Orange (1971), while the sterile, white room housing the mysterious substances feels like it’s suspended in time, echoing 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). The burgundy carpet in the Beverly Canyon home even recalls the ominous softness of A Clockwork Orange, as Sue stretches like the “cat lady” from that same film.

Collaborating with set designer Stanislas Reydellet, Fargeat creates symbolic environments that mirror the inner lives of her characters: young Sue’s cluttered, chaotic home contrasts with the dark, oppressive lair of an increasingly aged and despairing Elisabeth.

Ma c’è ancora tanto altro cinema in The Substance e nella sua estetica: quando a Sue viene chiesto di pronunciare il suo nome in macchina, Fargeat stringe sul primo piano delle labbra che si moltiplicano in schermi televisivi analogici, collegamento all’identità e alla carriera di Elisabeth nonché brillante riferimento a Videodrome (1983) di David Cronenberg (considerato padre del body horror e autore di un altro geniale quanto disturbante film sul tema del doppio, Inseparabili, del 1988). 

Yet The Substance pays homage to even more cinema: when Sue is asked her name in a car scene, Fargeat inserts a close-up of her lips multiplying across analog TV screens, hinting at Elisabeth’s fractured identity and referencing David Cronenberg’s Videodrome (1983). 

Cronenberg, the pioneer of body horror and creator of Dead Ringers (1988), another unsettling exploration of duality, also looms large. Echoes of The Fly (1986), Brian Yuzna’s Society (1989), Alien: Covenant (2017), The Elephant Man (1980), Dick Tracy’s yellow trench coat, Jack Nicholson’s Joker grin, and Sissy Spacek’s blood-soaked Carrie (1976) all emerge as layers in Fargeat’s disturbing mosaic.

Revenge is something Fargeat understands intimately. Her debut feature, Revenge (2017), combined gore with feminist critique, set in a sterile, glass-and-concrete house that mirrored the cold, predatory nature of its male inhabitants. Unlike that film’s house, a cage overlooking a harsh desert that becomes a crucible for rebirth, Elisabeth’s home is a mirror that stares back – Sue’s giant image dominating the window, reflecting a relentless, judging eye on a fractured self. This eye scrutinizes the female body molded too long to suit the beholder’s gaze.