Aicha IRAQI

The Substance is as subtle as a parent nervously teaching you how to drive, and its lack of nuance borders on comical. The central message—standards for being a woman are toxic—is painfully obvious, but it’s stretched beyond reason. The film expects us to believe that these standards would make women so desperate as to inject a neon green substance from a shady backdoor deal without even asking, "Does this have side effects?" While claiming to be feminist, The Substance presents a vision of femininity through a blatantly misogynistic lens. Elizabeth Sparkles (Demi Moore) is portrayed as a naive, shallow creature in a desperate bid to stay young and beautiful. Her character, along with her younger clone Sue, is so devoid of psychological depth that they come off as little more than caricatures. Reducing womanhood to mere vanity is insulting to the intelligence of the audience, especially since the film pretends to challenge these very stereotypes, while still portraying women who lose their youth as grotesque, Gollum-like figures. Even as The Substance criticizes the way men and the Hollywood industry discard women once they reach their expiration date, it still falls prey to the male gaze and objectification. The film fails to explore the emotional complexity of Elizabeth's transformation and instead focuses on the superficial. It’s baffling that her first instinct is to head to an audition and try to relaunch her career, as if youth instantly equates to professional success. The director’s intentions are painfully obvious. It’s as if they could have written “This is a critique of a society obsessed with appearances” 1,000 times on a blank page instead of making the film. The message is hammered home so repeatedly that it’s insulting to the audience’s ability to grasp even the simplest narrative cues. To top it off, it feels as though the director got carried away with sensationalist gore, at the expense of any meaningful and/or qualitative body horror.