|
There are many adjectives one could apply to Coralie Fargeat's new gonzo body-horror film The Substance, but "subtle" is not one of them. It's the kind of movie that will hammer home its message eight times when once would have done, and it occasionally acts as though it is the first work of art to ever have realized that women's lives are perceived as having less value after they reach a certain age and/or level of unfuckability. Did you suspect the movie had things to say about how straight men only value women for one thing? Here are 1,700 shots of women's asses in extreme closeup. Do you get it now? Those qualities are inherent to what makes the film exhausting and what makes it absurdly watchable. Every time you think the movie has found some new way to make its point, it finds five more, each more disgusting than the last. It won the screenplay prize at Cannes, and while some have found this award sort of laughable (again, this is not a particularly nuanced piece of writing), I simply point to the fact that Greta Gerwig was jury president at the festival. If ever a movie were the shadow Barbie, it's probably The Substance. The Substance is also a movie about trans womanhood, one that feels as if a cis woman stumbled upon entirely accidentally by leaning so far over the edge of Gender that she fell in. Is it egg cinema? It's not not egg cinema!
Want to read more? That's where a paid subscription will come in handy. You can participate in our ongoing September sale, which lasts only through Monday. Hurry, hurry, hurry!
|
