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Is The Substance really a feminist film? This question was on my mind the minute the credits started to roll. After seeing brutal depictions of self-hatred, vanity, and sexual objectification, I left this film feeling… gross. Hopeless. Really nauseous. I thought that the issues that the film tackled would leave me feeling enlightened–especially as a female filmmaker. The Substance is, in fact, a body horror film. Does my revulsion and lack of positive takeaways make it less of a feminist film?

The Substance is a 2024 film directed by Coralie Fargeat about a middle-aged woman struggling to keep her career as an actress in Hollywood due to her age, so she resorts to using a mysterious drug called “The Substance” that births a second, younger version of herself. Fargeat is a French filmmaker who has directed previous films about women’s issues and has seen much success in the film festival circuit and Hollywood.

The Director’s Intent in The Substance

Fargeat intended to direct a fiercely feminist film, as she discussed at her Oscars interview. From Indie Wire, she says:

“The movie is about women’s bodies, and to me, I couldn’t find a better way than body horror to show the violence that we can do to ourselves. That was the real metaphor. There is symbolism to play with that flesh: ‘This is what we have inside. There is the white, lovely smile. And behind this, it’s a whole other world. I’m going to show you the inside world. And yes, it’s that violence, it’s that bloody, it’s that uncomfortable, and it can be that fucked up.”

Fargeat treated this horror film like most horror films: as a cautionary tale. Do not allow yourself to do this. Give yourself care and kindness, because if you don’t, you’ll end up feeding into the very thing that you hate. The lack of self-control in this film was something that made me reconsider who or what the real antagonist of the film was. Was it Demi Moore’s character, Elisabeth Sparkle, herself? While she did literally become two different versions of herself, the “old” and the “young,” we have to consider what created her present circumstances: Hollywood. It’s a system built on exploiting people and tossing them aside when they are no longer young, sexy, and marketable. This is especially true for women, who have difficulty being cast in lead roles beyond age 35. How often do we see female leads cast that are 10-20 years younger than their male counterparts?

Elisabeth and Sue: An Fascinating Take on the Man vs. Self Conflict

Sue, played by Margaret Qualley, did a great job at becoming someone we hated, distinct from Elisabeth Sparkle. In reality, she and Elisabeth are one and the same. That’s what the mysterious dealers of the eponymous Substance said too: you are ONE. It’s such an interesting and literal way to visualize the battle that goes on in a woman’s mind when you’re faced with such sexism and pressure to stay attractive (young) forever.

The fight scene between Sue and Elisabeth was incredibly hard to watch. Sue was monstrous as she ruthlessly attacked an elderly, haggard Elisabeth. What made it even harder was knowing that she’s just beating herself up. Sue is Elisabeth–but with her desire to be young and loved by the masses again, she made herself deliberately ignorant of each half. I argue that there weren’t two separate consciousnesses with Sue and Elisabeth. The consciousness just shifts. This makes it even easier for Elisabeth to hate herself by directing it to Sue, a scapegoat for her insecurities. And to cope, she’s become so incredibly violent that she essentially killed herself. It was suicide.

Genuine Critique of the Male Gaze or Just Mimicking It?

The frequently voyeuristic delivery of The Substance made it difficult to really consider it as a feminist piece. Sometimes, it felt as if the audience was more of a gazing eye no better than the Hollywood executives in the film itself. Some of the editing or cinematography choices didn’t make me feel as emotionally intimate as I wanted to be with Elisabeth.

With one scene in particular, there was such an emphasis on the male gaze for the purpose of critique that it really just became the male gaze itself. During Sue’s shoot for the new exercise show, Pump it Up, there’s a montage of Sue and her crew dancing with repeated shots of her pelvic area and breasts. She wears a bright pink jumpsuit that doesn’t cover much of her body.

Mimicking the male gaze was actually something that Fargeat discussed as being a conscious decision during an interview on NPR.

“… And the other part is the outside world, which is represented by Sue, and how the body in the outside world is reduced to hypersexy body parts that put you in the public eyes and make you feel that that’s the way you’re going to be valued…”

It may have been an attempt to mimic the male gaze, but to me, that part ran on for too long. I felt like one of my own film professors would have told me to cut that down. The audience could understand the idea and message the director wanted to send within a quarter of that time. We’ve seen her multiple times before this and we know that she is in fact, younger and plumper than her original body. I hear some of you: it’s the shock value! While understandable, this film risks being oversaturated by these explicit shots, to the extent where it no longer critiques the issue, but becomes the issue it’s supposed to critique. It’s a thin line to walk on and I don’t know if The Substance was successful.

While The Substance may have issues in its execution, the film did highlight an older woman’s experience in today’s youth-obsessed society. Her fear and disgust with herself was heart-wrenching and is a solid representation of the unfair expectations that women follow to stay relevant.

The Substance fulfilled its intended purpose. Would I call it a feminist film, though? I’m still not sure. Let me know what you think!