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The Monster You Become: Coralie Fargeat on The Substance
Demi Moore in The Substance Even for the most callous horror-heads, Coralie Fargeat’s debut feature, Revenge (2017), stunned with its gruesome rape-revenge plot and blunt-force style, announcing the French director as a genre talent on the rise, capable of invoking her cinematic inspirations while departing from them on her own frenzied, feminist terms. The Substance, which won the award for Best Screenplay when it premiered at Cannes earlier this year, somehow cranks up the madness even further, unfolding a dark Hollywood fairytale about aging and feminine beauty standards that stands among the most adventurous in the body horror genre.
Demi Moore plays Elisabeth Sparkle, a celebrity fitness guru forced to retire from her long-running aerobics show thanks to the misogynistic plottings of her network’s producers, led by the aptly named Harvey (Dennis Quaid). One day, she discovers a miracle medicine—acquired via a call with an anonymous Deep Throat–like figure and regular visits to a seemingly abandoned warehouse—that promises to restore her youth and beauty. The results are fabulous: Each seven-day cycle, Elisabeth can switch bodies with Sue (Margaret Qualley), a cover-girl type, under the condition that she switch back for another seven days after every round. Naturally, Elisabeth fails to adhere to this balance, which begins the progressive—soon spectacular—deformation of her original body. Fisheye lenses, ickily intimate close-ups and composer Raffertie’s pulsing score help create an ominous, otherworldly atmosphere as Elisabeth spirals. Fargeat tempers this darkness and grim self-loathing with punchy satire and gross-out absurdity, culminating in a literal blood bath that seems to mock any attempt at interpretation. The Substance is a refreshingly unhinged work, uninterested in so-called prestige horror’s gloomy standards of profundity, and all the more free—and fun—because of it.
The Substance will hit U.S. theaters on September 20, via MUBI. At the end of August, I spoke with Fargeat, who Zoomed in from her apartment in Paris’s 20th arrondissement, about her love of genre film, symbolism and working with Hollywood actors.
Filmmaker: Between Revenge and The Substance, I think it’s clear you’re attracted to extreme gore and horror with a feminist throughline. Is that intentional? Is genre at the core of your identity as a filmmaker?
Fargeat: When I started thinking about making my second feature, I knew it would be a genre film—that’s what I love. Genre is the way I like to tell my stories because in that mode I can create and push boundaries and build my own universe with stuff from my own imagination. With Revenge, I started to explore these feminist themes, but that wasn’t something I was conscious of when I made it. So, embracing this feminist label was a shift that really opened up my way of thinking, and I realized all these creative choices I’m drawn to could also have a personal resonance. I thought, “With my next film, I want to take it a step up and explore these themes even deeper.” Revenge and The Substance are quite different, but they’re both strongly linked to women’s bodies—the way our bodies are constantly scrutinized in public spaces, the way our bodies define so much of the way people see us. They determine our place in society. When I started writing The Substance, I had just entered my forties. I thought, “OK, life is over! That’s the end of it. The world will no longer be interested in me. I’m going to become invisible.” Then, it really hit me how absurd this line of thinking is! That’s when inspiration struck. How to make a story out of this feeling that women of a certain age have entered a kind of jail?
Filmmaker: The concerns are real, but the movie is also working in a fantasy register. What made you want to go with the Hollywood framing?
Fargeat: I started with all kinds of crazy ideas and eventually settled on this idea of a fading actress. I love working with symbolism—as you might’ve noticed, there’s not much dialogue in the film—so, it took me a while to find the right symbolic person. What kind of woman could represent, in a heightened way, these concerns about appearance and the diminishment of your value based on your fading looks? That’s when the idea of the actress came to me, this woman who feeds off a kind of love based on how successfully attractive and interestingly they present themselves. So, of course it had to be set in Hollywood, which exists in everyone’s head unconsciously, whether they’ve been there or not. Everyone understands this particular fantasy and has their own version of it, which is why I wanted to present a Hollywood that was a bit unreal and blatantly artificial.
Filmmaker: Demi Moore is so central to the film. I’m not sure I can imagine it without her, given this Hollywood context. At what stage did she become involved? Did you present her with a finished script, or did you shape it around her in any way?
Fargeat: Demi came after the script was done. When I was writing, I knew I wanted the actress to be iconic and have great stature in the industry in real life, though I knew it would be a huge challenge to find someone who would be willing to confront these fears head-on. I had a list of names, and Demi’s came up. At first, I thought we shouldn’t waste her time—or our time—by sending her the script, but then we decided we had nothing to lose. Then, I got a call back that she was really interested!
Filmmaker: Was she on board with everything from the get-go, or did you have to work through some plot points or compromise on certain elements?
Fargeat: Oh, she was ready! She really intuited what I wanted the film to be. The biggest challenge was that we were shooting in France. By Hollywood standards, it was more of an indie production. We really had to plot out everything we were going to do given the various constraints, and we absolutely needed to be on the same page before even beginning to shoot, especially since the movie is so visual and relies so much on performance. We had to practice and rehearse a lot of what certain images were going to look like, so it was great that she had such good instincts despite this production being completely unlike the way she’s used to doing things. To prepare for our work together, I read her memoir and discovered someone who had taken many risks in her life. I didn’t have that image of her previously, so it was beautiful to realize that I was really working with a free spirit, someone who had made innovative and, at times, provocative choices throughout her career.
Filmmaker: How about the monster design? What was it like directing that part of her performance? Did she have any input on how the monster would look and behave?
Fargeat: I developed the monster with my prosthetics team, and Demi pretty much shaped her performance according to that final product. First off, the prosthetics process was huge. We worked on those for a long, long time in advance, before the actresses even arrived. I had a very vivid idea of what it should look like, and I knew I didn’t want it to look realistic. It’s not supposed to represent the aging process in a true way, it’s like a deformed version of it—deformed because the transformation is also determined by fear and anger. So, I had a lot of discussions with the prosthetics artists about what exactly that meant and about creating certain looks by improvising and trying out certain techniques that would allow us to finish in the time we had. When Demi arrived in Paris, I remember she was so eager to see the prosthetics. Seeing what she would eventually look like in the film was really important for her understanding of the character. She took a lot of pictures!
Filmmaker: You spoke earlier about your love of symbolism, which reminds me of the film’s opening scene with the shot of the Hollywood star and then the way you present “the substance” itself—the egg yolks, the syringe. All of this unfolds wordlessly. Can you talk about inventing the “rules” for the drug and how you developed this visual aspect of its various steps and codes?
Fargeat: From the beginning, I knew there’d be this drug, but I worked out the steps and the logic as I finalized other parts of the script. Basically, I had a few starting points: It had to come in a form that you can’t talk to anyone about. It exists under the radar, like something you’d get off the black market. So, there’s that mysterious vibe, and then there had to be this voice—creepy but also seductive, a voice and a speaker whom we never see. I liked this idea of the substance’s user becoming a number, like taking the drug is also a process of dehumanization. The big picture was to create a Faustian pact with this devil drug that you can’t resist but adjusted for the world of advertising. When you start to unravel, you can’t get anyone on the phone, and that’s how the vicious circle begins. I also wanted to show all this as a completely solitary process. It’s a maddening thing, being by yourself, lonely, just you and your body. We do crazy things to ourselves physically when we feel like we’re losing control mentally, and in that dark space there’s no one there to help you or guide you.
Filmmaker: Was Ozempic something that came to mind?
Fargeat: Sort of, but not specifically that. The substance embodies all these magical beauty products that have been sold to us since we were kids. There have been dozens of miracle powders advertised to us to help us lose a few kilos; diets that promise these extreme results; creams with caffeine that help you get rid of cellulite. They go by different names and come in different forms depending on your generation, but they’re all the same—they’re this promise of achieving a dream or an idea of perfection. If you’re thin and sexy, then you’ll finally be happy. To me, the movie is about the lengths you’re willing to go to be happy and to be loved.
Filmmaker: Like, in some cases, catering to the male gaze! I wanted to talk a bit about those emphatically male-gazey moments with Margaret Qualley’s character Sue: the ridiculous fitness routines, the zooms on her ass, all that. For those scenes, what were the conversations like between you and Margaret and your cinematographer Benjamin Kračun?
Fargeat: I think my script made all this super clear. I really went out of my way to describe the visuals of these moments, what you see and hear—so you could already see how absurd it all is from the script page. There are even some parts of the script that directly say, like, “shot of ass” or “close-up on ass.” Sue is a character who is hyperaware that to show her ass or her breasts means becoming the center of attention. From the beginning, Margaret knew that her character is meant to be this representation of the male ideal—or at least the idea of a perfect sexy woman that someone of my generation grew up with—curvy with a super thin waist. Margaret understood that so much of the performance would be physical.
Filmmaker: So, did Margaret have to go through a crazy workout regimen or were there effects involved?
Fargeat: Well, she worked a lot with a personal trainer to sculpt her body in that specific way, and on top of that we used prosthetics on her breasts and whatnot. The goal was to shape her in a way that was also unreal.
Filmmaker: And what about the vibe on set during those music video-esque scenes? Seems like it could’ve been either awkward or really fun.
Fargeat: It was actually pretty funny and casual. We all knew this depiction of female sexuality had to be heightened, so the mood was blasé. We had all discussed the true meaning and satire behind the image and that everything had to be hyperbolic. The performers had rehearsed the choreography dozens of times, and the choreography was created based on my extremely detailed storyboard. I guided the cinematographer very precisely, almost shot-by-shot. It was so technical and meticulous and pre-prepared that we couldn’t help but laugh about it sometimes—it was just so absurd. Like, OK, time to do an ass close-up. We were able to have fun with it because nothing came as a surprise, and we were very at ease with what we were creating.
Filmmaker: I think it’s funny that the women are the ones who become literal monsters, and yet the most disgusting character is Harvey, the producer played by Dennis Quaid.
Fargeat: Again, I have to go back to my love of symbolism. The way he eats those shrimps, for instance, is supposed to express the way certain powerful people, powerful men, are fundamentally violent. I didn’t want to be shy at all about making him appear really gross and hyper-misogynistic, so gross that it becomes funny.
Obviously, there are real people that behave like that, and they’re not caricatures, they’re real! But I wanted the performance to tap into that extreme and that group of people.
Filmmaker: Did he actually eat all those shrimps?
Fargeat: Yeah, he really gave it his all. [Laughs] He really ate those two kilos of shrimp that day.
Filmmaker: I read that the late Ray Liotta was intended for this role.
Fargeat: It was very sad. I had met Ray in L.A., and he was so excited about the role. He died right before he was supposed to arrive in Paris to start prepping for it. It was a shock; I loved him a lot. We took some time to mourn and process what had happened, and eventually started brainstorming for another actor. Dennis came to mind because there is something excessive about his personality. He’s not afraid to appear over-the-top, which comes off as quite funny in a satirical way. I sent him the script, and he immediately got back to me and was super enthusiastic. The shoot was long. The actresses had 87 days for main photography, but Dennis was only there for 17 days. The energy he brought was actually quite refreshing, and it balanced out the fact that the actresses are immersed in this heavier, deeper place.
Filmmaker: The film is playing with so many references—David Cronenberg, The Shining, The Thing, to name a few. Why was it interesting for you to invoke these classics? Can you talk about your relationship to cinephilia and how that plays out in the film?
Fargeat: When I write, I truly allow myself to be guided by all my gut feelings, all the images that come to mind. I watched all those films when I was younger, and to this day they continue to influence my way of thinking and my imagination. They’ve given me images that I’ve latched onto and that continue to live inside me. And part of my filmmaking process is about digesting what’s inside me, which kind of connects to my interest in body horror and stories about flesh and bones. The images from those movies are still super alive in me—like, when I think of long corridors, I immediately feel that I’m not in normal reality. That’s powerful to me, noticing one detail about a location and suddenly being taken somewhere else. Maybe I’m kind of like the monster at the end [laughs]. It goes through this endless transformation and absorbs things around it, and as a filmmaker I feel like all these horror movies are inside me. Filmmakers should be feeding off one another. It’s kind of beautiful. You create who you are, but who you are is also what you’ve watched, what you’ve grown up with, what you’ve dreamt.
