FIVE ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATIONS! INCLUDING BEST PICTURE, BEST ACTRESS, BEST DIRECTOR
Watch Demi’s Golden Globe award acceptance speech.
Demi Moore gives a career-best performance as Elisabeth Sparkle, a former A-lister past her prime and suddenly fired from her fitness TV show by repellent studio head Harvey (Dennis Quaid). She is then drawn to the opportunity presented by a mysterious new drug: THE SUBSTANCE. All it takes is one injection and she is reborn – temporarily – as the gorgeous, twentysomething Sue (Margaret Qualley). The only rule? Time needs to be split: exactly one week in one body, then one week in the other. No exceptions. A perfect balance. What could go wrong?
Deliriously entertaining and ruthlessly satirical, Coralie Fargeat’s Cannes sensation turns toxic beauty culture inside out with a be-careful-what-you-wish-for fable for the ages. Explosive, provocative and twisted, THE SUBSTANCE marks the arrival of a thrillingly visionary filmmaker.
*Contains material and themes suitable only for mature audiences.*
Awards highlights: Actress (Golden Globe), Director (New York Film Critics), Picture (New York Film Critics)
Nominations highlights: Actress (Academy, BAFTA, Critics Choice, Film Independent Spirit, Screen Actors Guild) Director (Academy, Critics Choice, Golden Globe), Picture (Academy, Critics Choice, Film Independent Spirit, Golden Globe, Cannes – Palme d’Or)
For my money, one of the best things you can do this season is to run to see the French director Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance while it is still playing on the big screen. -The New Yorker
Demi Moore seizes the role of her lifetime as a movie star turned fitness guru who gets axed for committing the cardinal sin of aging. You’ve never seen anything like the body horrors in Coralie Fargeat’s gory and glorious takedown of youth obsession. -ABC News
The Substance is a horrifically absurd exploration of Hollywood’s obsession with beauty. -Boston Globe
With this cross between David Cronenberg body horror and Sunset Boulevard, Moore inserts herself into the Oscar conversation, giving a performance that is both literally naked and operatically dark. -AARP Movies for Grownups
Pushes everything past the point of moderation and decency until it becomes a riotous discourse on the personal and cultural forces that drive women to madness in search of physical perfection. -The Daily Beast
Fargeat delivers a macabre, funny, tragic, absurd and grotesque Grand Guignol of butts and guts; a bonkers and brutal “beauty horror” that elevates the genre to a hysterically unprecedented heights. -Tribune News Service
Deep within all the oozing spinal fluids and pustulant growths here, there’s a kernel of credibility: The Substance plunges us into the deranged, disorienting emotional carnage of menopause in a way that few other films have managed. -Observer
This is a film unlike any other you will see right now. It will not be to everyone’s taste. For this reviewer, who craves originality, it is a winner. -The Australian
‘NR’ 141min
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