A modern but stodgy tale on aging, dangerously in keeping with the specific (poor) taste that seems to reign on the festival.
The film’s surprising selection has obviously been interpreted as an attempt to repeat Titane’s success, and once again propel a young French body horror director to the Palme d’Or, but in the end it is just as reminiscent of Ruben Ostlund (Triangle of Sadness) in its buffoonery and bazooka-style satire of the elites – in this case, that TV. The Substance is a gory fable about the fear of aging, embodied by a declining actress (Demi Moore) who is offered an elixir by a mysterious company to give birth to a rejuvenated understudy with slender curves and firm buttocks (Margaret Qualley). But she must abide by one strict condition: alternate the use of the two bodies, or monstrous malfunctions will – and do – appear. The film is an experiment on the edge of the tolerable, because of the ultraviolence of its form, with some sense of the gigantic – all the lines are shouted-, but above all because of the ugliness of its gaze, which turns everything it sees into object.
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The Substance is in short a film-object about objects, in which nothing breathes, everything is symmetrical, clean as a dissection table – body horror without a body. When it comes to the subject matter, we find yourselves yawning at it – the quest for eternal youth is a deadly chimera, no kidding – when it comes to the film itself, we would recommend it neither to those with weak stomachs nor sensitive eardrums.
Traduction Emma Frigo
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