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‘The Substance’ Review: Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley in a Visionary Feminist Body-Horror Film That Takes Cosmetic Enhancement to Extremes
Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley take cosmetic enhancement to extremes in a grippingly grotesque fusion of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" and "Showgirls."
By that, I don’t mean that it’s some elegant exercise in egghead darkness like the films of David Cronenberg, or a patchy postmodern punk curio like “Titane.” Coralie Fargeat, the writer-director of “The Substance,” has a voice that’s italicized, in-your-face, garishly accessible and thrillingly extreme. It means that after she gives herself the injections, Elisabeth passes into a state of hibernation on the bathroom floor, her skin splits open right down the spine, and, like the pod people emerging from human beings in “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” out comes her new self: a “perfect” specimen of sexy vibrant youthful womanhood played by Margaret Qualley. Dennis Quaid plays the brash pig of a network executive, in baroquely decorated suit jackets, who has decided to fire Elisabeth, and when he’s having lunch with her, shoving shrimp in his mouth from what feels like four inches away from the audience, you want to recoil as much as she does.
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