Alles, was ich vorab über den Film von Coralie Fargeat (Regie und Drehbuch) gehört hatte, klang so vielversprechend, dass ich es nach langem Verzicht mal wieder mit einem Horrorfilm in unserer VC-Runde versucht habe.
Meine Erwartungen wurden übererfüllt, ich war erstaunt und begeistert von dem bildgewaltigen Kammer-Spektakel, in der Telko meinte ich, dass The Substance in der Filmgeschichte einen Status wie The Shining oder Rosemary's Baby erlangen werde. Dem wurde seitens der übrigen Gucker widersprochen. Andreas fühlte sich zwar gut unterhalten, meinte aber, dass die enthaltene Gesellschaftskritik ziemlich flach sei. Ute war auch eher wohlwollend, war der Meinung, es handele sich gar nicht um einen Horrorfilm und bemängelte, dass die gespaltene Hauptfigur nicht lernfähig sei und völlig egoistisch bleibe und darum der Film die Verantwortung für das desaströse Geschehen einzelnen Frauen in die Schuhe schiebe, statt die gesellschaftlichen Normen anzuklagen.
Silke meinte, dass es ihr unverständlich sei, dass der Film von einer Frau sei (was ich nicht verstanden habe, angesichts der hundertprozentig weiblichen Perspektive und angesichts der Männerfiguren, die allesamt frauenfeindliche Arschlöcher sind.) Abo hat zwar beim Gucken viel gelacht und offenbar am meisten Spaß gehabt, danach aber gesagt, dass der Film der Französin sehr amerikanisch sei (= oberflächlich, formelhaft und gewalttätig, richtig?). Lisa konnte die ganzen gezeigten Injektionen nicht gut ertragen und fand die Handlung zu vorhersehbar. Umso erfreuter war sie über das überraschende, blutige Finale. Sven hat leider, wie zu erwarten war, dem Film überhaupt nichts abgewinnen können und die meiste Zeit die Augen geschlossen. Fazit: Immerhin gab's keine allgemeine Ablehnung wie bei The Wailing oder bei Us von Jordan Peele. Vielleicht darf das Genre zukünftig doch wenigstens ein Nischendasein im VC fristen.
Krysta Fauria hat bei AP eine Filmkritik geschrieben, die dicht an meiner Sicht ist und die ich faulerweise darum einfach hier komplett zitiere:
"In its first two hours, “The Substance” is a well-made, entertaining movie. Writer-director Coralie Fargeat treats audiences to a heavy dose of biting social commentary on ageism and sexism in Hollywood, with a spoonful of sugar- and sparkle-doused body horror.
But the film’s deliciously unhinged, blood-soaked and inevitably polarizing third act is what makes it unforgettable.
What begins as a dread-inducing but still relatively palatable sci-fi flick spirals deeper into absurdism and violence, eventually erupting — quite literally — into a full-blown monster movie. Let the viewer decide who the monster is.
Fargeat — who won best screenplay at this year’s Cannes Film Festival — has been vocal about her reverence for “The Fly” director David Cronenberg, and fans of the godfather of body horror will see his unmistakable influence. But “The Substance” is also wholly unique and benefits from Fargeat’s perspective, which, according to the French filmmaker, has involved extensive grappling with her own relationship to her body and society’s scrutiny.
“The Substance” tells the story of Elisabeth Sparkle, a famed aerobics instructor with a televised show, played by a powerfully vulnerable Demi Moore. Sparkle is fired on her 50th birthday by a ruthless executive — a perfectly cast Dennis Quaid, who nails sleazy and gross.
Feeling rejected by a town that once loved her and despairing over her bygone star power, Sparkle learns from a handsome young nurse about a black-market drug that promises to create a “younger, more beautiful, more perfect” version of its user. Though she initially tosses the phone number in the trash, she soon fishes it out in a desperate panic and places an order.
The one rule to follow is that Sparkle and her better self (Margaret Qualley) must trade places every seven days. So for one week at a time, she is forced again to live as her 50-year-old self. But the allure of youth and a made-for-TV butt proves too strong to resist. What’s the worst that can happen if she squeezes an extra day or two in?
Benjamin Kracun’s cinematography, particularly his low-angle shots and close-ups reminiscent of David Lynch’s movies — another filmmaker Fargeat credits as having influenced her as a director — expertly capture the omnipresent claustrophobia and anxiety that exist even while Sparkle is in the body of her better self.
Also evocative of Lynch is Fargeat’s compelling construction — between the fashion, architecture, aerobics and highly advanced cell-replicating drugs — of a kind of atemporal world.
Given that body horror has been all the rage at festivals — with Julia Ducournau’s “Titane” and Cronenberg’s “Crimes of the Future” also premiering at Cannes in recent years — it could be easy to write this movie off as capitalizing on the zeitgeist.
But “The Substance” resists being lost in that shuffle.
What is perhaps most impressive is the fact that, in its 140-minute runtime, the movie never feels like it’s dragging on. Fargeat ups the ante until the last second of the film, with a jaw-droppingly deranged final scene that is still somehow poignant.
If there’s a critique to be made about the film, it’s that the satire and caricatures are a bit heavy-handed, with most of the male characters being not-so-subtle misogynists. But that overkill is part of what makes it so much fun."
Und hier noch ein paar Auszüge aus der hymnischen Kritik von Mick LaSalle im SF Chronicle:
"Three things need to be said about “The Substance” at the outset: First, it is a movie that’s so extreme that it makes you wonder — in the best way — if the filmmaker is crazy.
Second, this is, without doubt, one of the most assured, intelligent, evocative and haunting horror films in a long time.
Finally, “The Substance” is very much a woman’s movie. The way writer-director Coralie Fargeat presents Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley — the matter-of-fact way in which she films their bodies, and the trust that she elicits from them — has the unmistakable stamp of a female director. This is obvious within minutes.
The film plays like a cascading sequence of epic disasters, each one worse than the last. It is laugh-inducing yet cringy and shocking. Often, we go to movies and know that we’ve seen something like this before. Not this time.
Here and there, Fargeat may reference “Carrie” (1976) and David Cronenberg, but that’s just to have fun with us. “The Substance” is very much her own bizarre, unique creation.
(…)
If it were less of a film, it would be easier to summarize what Fargeat is intending to say with this. “The Substance” is a commentary on what the media and society persuade women to do to their faces and bodies as they get older, and yet it’s not a precise critique. Rather, it’s a primal scream, one so angry and horrified that it’s beyond making sense. The film shows how sometimes a scream can express more than a sober argument.
The movie stars Moore, in her first major film role since “The Joneses” (2009), a fact that, by itself, makes the movie’s point. Here’s a huge star who hasn’t had a chance to do her best work in 15 years.
(…)
Fargeat gets across a remarkable amount of information with few and sometimes no words. We understand, for instance, that only one of the selves can be awake at any given time. We further understand the extent to which the two selves share a consciousness and the extent to which they don’t. And we understand the ways in which the two depend on each other for their physical survival.
“The Substance” gets more wonderfully appalling as it goes along, but it’s impressive from its first moments, and it never lets up. An overhead shot of the creation — and deterioration — of Elisabeth’s star on Hollywood Boulevard is fascinating to watch, and the sight of Moore walking down a red-walled corridor, passing a succession of photos of her younger self, is weirdly evocative in an undefinable sort of way.
Fargeat is so connected to this story and so fully invested in it that she ends up expressing something essential at each moment. There are no empty gestures. Every move she makes is right. Thus, the substance of “The Substance” is not just conveyed through ideas and emotions, but through shots, sets, camera angles and editing.
This is a brilliantly directed movie, from a talent too big to get stuck in the horror genre."
Metacritic: 78
IMdB: 7,7
Letterboxd: 3,9
Ich schätze The Substance wird am Ende des Jahres auf so ziemlich jeder Jahresbestenliste vertreten sein.
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