It’s 1:30 pm and I’m sitting in an empty Violet Crown movie theater in Santa Fe’s Railyard. I still smell of mineral baths and I’m ready to watch a long flick that I’ve been tracking in anticipation of potentially including it in my 50+ Film Fest this Dec 17-22 in Santa Fe (I am so excited about curating the dozen films we’ll be watching).
Yes, I’m alone in a theater with just two women sitting a few rows from me (who left about halfway through the movie). While I love watching films with friends, my selfish hobby is to spontaneously choose to see a movie at the last minute that may only be intriguing to me. “The Substance” felt like one of those movies. While it received a 90% Top Critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes, its focus on aging, ambition and eternal youth felt a little too niche for many of my friends. And, I’d heard it was one-part social commentary and three-parts horror film so that also prompted me to try it on my own.
Wow, I’m glad I got my dose of beauty in nature earlier that morning because, while this film was about the desire to bottle beauty, it is a very ugly film. I love Demi Moore and she deserves an Oscar nomination for her lead role, but the level of suffering she goes through – physically and emotionally – is over-the-top. The film is stylish and soulless as it follows Moore’s character, Elisabeth Sparkle, and her desperate desire to find the fountain of youth which, based upon a secretive, revolutionary chemical and lots of self-jabbing of needles, leads to actress Margaret Qualley showing up in her life as her younger, alter-ego. They are meant to be the same person, but they are psychologically competitive and both obsessed with mirrors.
I won’t tell you much more because I don’t want to create spoiler alerts, but it felt like the film is obsessed with its slick, stylized surface just like its main characters who believe beauty is only skin deep, egged on by a patriarchal world that says women are done at 50. It’s brutal to watch and gets progressively more horrific in terms of the grotesque body configurations. The ending reminded me a lot of that high school prom scene from “Carrie.” But, Cissy Spacek is far better looking than “The Elephant Man”-like character on stage at the end of this film. For a beautiful alternative reality about how we need to see more older women’s faces in the media, check out this recent NY Times piece on Maggie Smith’s face and aging as the ultimate luxury.
In sum, I was planning on having this be a late-night horror flick in our festival, but I think it’ll create too many nightmares based upon its chilling scenes (including the super closeups of Dennis Quaid allowing you to count his nose hairs). Twice when I’ve told friends that I’d seen this film, I mistakenly have called it “The Suffering” which is an apt description of what’s happening on screen but also what I was feeling in that empty theater.
Has anyone else seen this film yet and have some thoughts?
And, here’s a quick video of my time in the hot springs with the earthy vertical structures with water running down them looking a little like the monster at the end of “The Substance.”
-Chip