Since premiering at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance has ignited fervent discussions and reactions. The film centers on Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore), a Jane Fonda–esque actor and fitness icon who is abruptly laid off from her TV show by a misogynistic producer, Harvey (Dennis Quaid). Desperate to reclaim her relevance, she turns to the Substance, a black-market treatment that allows her to spawn Sue (Margaret Qualley)—a younger, better version of herself. The two versions cannot coexist, however, so Elisabeth must alternate between herself and her alternate every seven days—or else.
Driven by bold visuals, pulsating music, and minimal dialogue, The Substance delivers a lurid and merciless critique of society’s unsustainable beauty standards. Fargeat wrote the prizewinning script after turning 40, as she grappled with feelings of obsolescence and inadequacy. “I had these massive thoughts that I had reached the age where I wasn’t going to be useful or interesting to anyone anymore,” says Fargeat (Revenge). “The violence of those thoughts was so strong that I had to do something about it—otherwise it would totally destroy and crush me.”
And what better way to illustrate the challenges of societal pressure and self-worth than through a female actor? Influenced by body-horror titans like David Cronenberg and John Carpenter, Fargeat’s film delves into themes of rebirth and hypersexualization. “At every age, we can find something wrong with ourselves, which can make us feel like monsters,” the French filmmaker says. “Your image defines you and your self-worth. But I thought that if I could create something meaningful about these issues, it could also serve as a form of liberation.”
Here, Fargeat speaks to Vogue about her process. Note: This interview contains spoilers.
Vogue: The Substance’s themes have been with you for a long time, but I’m curious when you actually wrote the script, because the injected substance almost feels like Ozempic.
Coralie Fargeat: It was maybe five years ago. Ozempic wasn’t around, but we had many other Ozempics in the past. In France, we had other medical products used to suppress your appetite and make you lose weight. Women took amphetamines to stay thin or drank powders that were supposed to be some magic diet replacement. Ozempic is just a new incarnation of something that’s been around since the beginning. The fact that the movie has any resonance is great—but, at the same time, tells me that, unfortunately, the issue is still very much around.
I read that Demi Moore had never heard of body horror before signing onto this film. How did you prepare her for the role, since the movie is not shy in that respect?
We had many preliminary conversations before starting work on the film because, in addition to the usual preparation for her performance, we needed to consider the extensive level of prosthetics for the body-horror element. Basically, there are a lot of constraints during shooting because prosthetics are so time-consuming and don’t always make for the most logical or rational approach to acting. It’s super important to make sure actors know that so they can adapt.
And of course, we discussed the level of nudity that the movie required. The script was quite explicit, and I wrote every shot in detail, so I wanted to make sure we talked through everything in advance—especially the meaning behind each scene so nothing felt gratuitous. Most important, for me and her, was grasping the purpose of these scenes—how and why the nudity was serving what the movie was all about, how it’s a way to show our vulnerability with our own bodies, and how the way we look at the flesh can be so different when you’re alone in your bathroom or you’re Sue in front of the camera and everyone is looking at your ass.
Speaking of Sue, how did you come up with that name? When she first appears you don’t expect her to say a name that’s so old-fashioned and uncommon for someone her age.
It came during the writing. To me the name embodies a Marilyn Monroe vibe, like an old Lolita, baby-doll, sexy icon type. It evokes the past, and subconsciously it was a way for me to symbolically reference the images and representations of the past that shaped today’s expectation of what is beautiful, sexy, and valued. It’s something I preserved unconsciously with the name.
Speaking of classic Hollywood actresses and needing to look a certain way: I noticed you used the main theme from Vertigo, a movie that is also very much about a man attempting to mold a woman to his liking.
Totally. At first it was just supposed to be a placeholder when I was editing because I didn’t have a composer on board yet. It’s delicate and feminine and felt fitting to what I wanted to express in that scene—this kind of softness and reverie of a perfect actress contrasting with the monstrous figure. Like before, it’s also a link to cinema and how cinema has shaped these kinds of archetypes. When I finally collaborated with the composer, we realized how well this music conveyed the symbolism of that moment, so we made sure to keep it.
Can you talk about the film’s color palette? Elisabeth wears a very striking yellow peacoat that makes her very conspicuous. Was there any meaning behind that?
My scripts don’t have backstories, so we only get to know the character through a few key details: what she does, where she lives, and how she dresses. So all those images need to present themselves symbolically in a way that works for the movie. I don’t always know why certain elements resonate with me, but I feel strongly about them. Yellow felt like it was right for her. I wanted it to place her in a superhero-like space, representing her as Elisabeth Sparkle before her transformation. Other colors are chosen more consciously: I knew I wanted Sue to have the poppy femininity of pink, which is a bit like the oldest living symbol for that kind of thing.
The world the movie takes place in feels just one step removed from reality. At times it feels like we’re in Elisabeth’s head, which makes sense since body issues can be so internal. Was this how you envisioned it when writing the film?
From the start I knew I wasn’t interested in depicting the real Hollywood but rather what it’s about. It’s about beauty. It’s about success. Taking it out of reality was a way to make it timeless and thus universal, like the story could happen today, yesterday, or tomorrow—as well as anywhere. I wanted the locations and set decorations to have a very strong symbolic meaning.
Each of the locations represents something. For instance, the long orange corridor at the TV network represents Elisabeth’s life. She started at some point at one end and then is finished when she reaches the other. Having these strong visual statements from the start can [suggest to] the audience that we are in a distinct world that has its own rules. We don’t care about realism or reality—we’re in the world of The Substance.
I gave the same explanation to my crew when designing the apartment. It was important for it to have a timeless, old-fashioned but also futuristic quality so it could represent every age, every kind of world, while also being rich in symbolism. The large window connects the inside and outside and lets Elisabeth gaze at her past, which is at one point taken from her. When Sue is reborn, the view becomes the future.
The white bathroom, where all her transformations occur, serves as a cocoon where she confronts herself—almost like an experimental chamber. It’s a mental space, and I wanted it to feel very abstract, stylized, and almost empty. I remember my production designer asking, “Are you sure you don’t want any furniture in the bathroom at all?”
The movie could have ended in a few different places, but it keeps going off in a direction some people might not expect. Why did you decide to take it all the way to the extremes that you do?
The movie was meant to express everything that I felt needed to be said without any restrictions because the movie is fundamentally about the violence of control—how we’re told to be delicate. Think of the past when women had to wear clothes that tightened everything up. I really wanted to [exhales] let it out. I wanted to explode and shatter everything in a violent and uncompromising way because to shake this, we need an earthquake, a tsunami. We don’t need to move this—we need to change the whole foundations of society.
When the final transformation arrives, it felt quite intuitive to bring the character ultimate relief. Ironically, it’s when she’s totally deformed and monstrous that she doesn’t care what she looks like. In fact, it’s the only time she looks in the mirror and kind of likes what she sees. That’s the moment when she finally feels like she deserves to go out in public, no matter what she looks like. We hide behind our polished smiles, and I wanted the character to unleash those hidden anxieties. The audience [in the film], which stands in for all of us as a society, screams and hates her for this, and I wanted to portray how violent that reaction can be. That the only real moment of relief that she has is when she doesn’t have a body anymore, I think, says it all.
What is it about body horror that stands out to you? For a long time, body-horror movies were typically only made by male directors.
Body horror can be a really powerful weapon of expression for female directors. From a young age I was drawn to universes. I felt like I didn’t fit in. I always liked playing with boys’ toys and watching their movies rather than engaging with dolls and cooking, which has never been my thing. This really shaped my understanding of how I could occupy public spaces and express myself. I knew there was no choice because this is who I am, and actually making my voice heard, as a genre filmmaker in France, has been challenging since the country doesn’t prioritize these kinds of films.
It’s still very imbalanced. It’s only recently that I discovered other women filmmakers that I feel I can relate to, because they didn’t exist when I was a kid or teenager. When I was writing my script, Jennifer Kent had a strong impact on me. We are made of what we’re exposed to, what we see and read, so it’s exciting to witness more [female directors] expressing their own identities and imaginations now.
This conversation has been edited and condensed. The Substance is in theaters everywhere on September 20.