Coralie Fargeat’s latest film The Substance is one of the best films of the year and winner of the best screenplay award at the Cannes Film Festival this past summer. The film stars Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, and Dennis Quaid. Fargeat’s last feature, Revenge, premiered at TIFF in 2017 and was well received. She roars back with The Substance, her second feature film.
It is the story of a fading actress who gets to look young again with an experimental drug. Everything goes wrong, of course, in this biting commentary on our society’s obsession with youth, the standard that women are held to, and our discomfort in our own skin.
While the body horror aspect, visceral camera work, set design, haunting sound work, and memorable score may bring to mind the works of masters like David Cronenberg and David Lynch, the comparison ends there – this is a unique vision that is compelling. It is a film that people will talk about, debate and decipher for years to come. Fargeat recently spoke with Immersive via Zoom.
[Note: This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.]
A lot is going on in this film. It was a fascinating take on how society views women and how women view themselves. What inspired you to take on this topic?
The theme of the movie is about women’s bodies. It’s about how women’s bodies have shaped our societal organization and have kind of built a very strong kind of dumb domination. This is a dynamic from the beginning of mankind. When you’re a woman you have to worry about your body. You have to think about how you are going to be seen in the public space, how you are going to be valued. How you have to use it to be seen to be getting attention on you and all this shapes us into a very problematic relationship with ourselves and it’s huge internal violence that we have to face, and that we all almost often hide behind, you know pearly smiles and kind of gentle behavior.
What was the spark that brought this from concept to completion?
The spark was very related to my personal life. I was past my forties. I was going towards my fifties. I started to think this was the end of my life. I thought no one would value me anymore. I thought it was time for me to address it in a film. It came together because I wanted to keep doing movies the way I love to make them in the genre area, which is for me, the best way I can express myself in a creative and and free way. You don’t have the limits of reality. You can create your codes, and your own rules to tell your story, and you can go as far as the Brundlefly, and everything to express to meet the violence of what I wanted to say about the theme.
In our minds, unreality can be reality, which is why I agree that genre is best playground to explore these themes. How did it turn into the idea of a drug that could achieve changing this?
I love to work with symbolism, like there are not many dialogues in my scripts and the way I express myself is really with a visual and cinematic sound experience. I wanted to portray the idea of, you know this kind of Faustian thing that arrives in your life, and which is a very simple promise, you’re gonna take this and it’s gonna change your life. You’re gonna be happy. You’re gonna be loved. It’s gonna transform everything. It’s gonna give us love and happiness. I think it’s a great metaphor for real products. This idea of that drug was a way of embodying all this and having this kind of devil’s voice. You know that whisper in your ears, take it, and you will be happy which is the most powerful thing.
Demi Moore is amazing in this. She’s been in the public eye for as long as I can remember. You got the best performance out of her, so what was your approach?
When we first met to discuss the project, the most important thing for me was to give her all the clues about what the movie was and how far it was going to go. The visuals, the sounds, all the rhythm, scenes without any dialogue, could she get all the clues of how this movie would be different from all the movies she’s made? I wanted to take a lot of time to give her all those keys.
You know all those understanding of the film on the whole level, which is not just the performance, but which is the rest of the film. I do think that a performance to go very far needs also to infuse itself and understand the rest of the crafting because they interact together because the movies, and the performance link to the visual, and the sound experience, so both can feed each other.
I’m glad you brought that up because the crafts in this film are superb.
I knew from the start that the movie wouldn’t have a lot of dialogue. I work with symbolism everything was going to be told in a sensory way. It was going to be the core of the DNA of the film because this is also how I write. I write, having visuals in mind, having sound in mind, and I listen to a lot of music. So, all those elements are present for me from the script to kind of define the vision, to define the DNA of what it’s going to be. I think in every department we’ve done such precise work of finding the exact references. That would really symbolize what I had in my brain.
The sound design and score are real standouts. What did the sound and score need to accomplish for you and your team?
I know when I shoot how much the sound is going to be important. How much is going to change the perception of a close-up that you feel. While in post, it was a lot of work with my sound crew like to give life to this other part of the film, this other beating heart of the film, which is the sound design and the music. The team did an amazing job in getting so much of the intention. So we could record the immersive beating heart, that we would record all the breathing moments we recorded so many crazy things to create the mood. This is the the fun part and of course working with Raffertie on on the score. So both of them, sound design and music, could work together to create an immersive experience.
I think that the most important when you’re a director is that you are the one who has the full picture and the full elements in your head, and you have to preserve that until all the pieces you know come together and can finally be enjoyed. I must say I’m extremely proud of the work that the crew has done. We gave ourselves the freedom to be innovative, to be creative. I think they love the film, too. You can see that a part of their heart is also in the movie.
The Substance is now in theaters.
