AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
In the new movie "The Substance," Demi Moore stars as Elisabeth Sparkle, an aging actress with an Oscar reduced to hosting a popular fitness show. One day, her boss Harvey, played by Dennis Quaid, takes her to lunch. While chowing down on a platter of shrimp, he tells Elisabeth that because she's 50, her career is over.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE SUBSTANCE")
DENNIS QUAID: (As Harvey) Renewal is inevitable. And at 50 - well, it stops.
DEMI MOORE: (As Elisabeth Sparkle) What stops?
QUAID: (As Harvey) What?
MOORE: (As Elisabeth) What stops?
QUAID: (As Harvey) You know, the - oh, George.
RASCOE: But a black market drug gives Elisabeth a second shot at her youth by creating a younger copy of her. There's a catch, though. They have to share time - a week with the old body, a week with the young. When the young body, Sue, played by Margaret Qualley, decides she wants more than her allotted time, things go wrong, very wrong, and it gets really gory. The movie highlights the impossible beauty standards women face and how aging often equals social and professional erase. So I asked the writer and director, Coralie Fargeat, about why the movie is set in Hollywood specifically.
CORALIE FARGEAT: It's just a way to symbolize what I think every woman, you know, has to face in her own life, and that happens everywhere. And, you know, the Hollywood of our collective and conscious mind seemed, to me, the perfect symbol to tell that story. And that's also why the Hollywood that I show in the film is not very realistic, you know? It's really more of a symbolic representation and shows, like, the situation where it can be anywhere.
RASCOE: I read that you began writing this story after you turned 40. What was going through your mind then?
FARGEAT: So I definitely experienced it in an internal level, like, starting to have those thoughts that because I wasn't going to be young, you know, and sexy, I was going to be erased from the public space, that no one was going to be interested in me, that, you know, I wasn't going to have any works anymore. I couldn't say that I experienced it in a real way in my life, but those thoughts were absolutely real in my brain.
RASCOE: You do have this movie that's all about beauty standards. And in many ways, Demi Moore has set beauty standards herself 'cause, I mean, she is just gorgeous in this movie and every movie, pretty much. Most women could never be like her at any age. Is that something you thought about when making the movie?
FARGEAT: I think the same - than you, like, you know? And I think what it says to me is that whatever you look like, the feeling inside are the same. Like, you can look like Demi and still feel that you're not good enough, that this part of your body is not right, that - you know, that this is not seen enough or whatever. And that's why I decided, you know, to also choose the character to be an actress because I think it's the maximum symbolistic, you know, representation of the kind of never-ending fight that you can have with yourself because you can always find something that makes you feel you're not good enough.
RASCOE: I want to talk about, like, the way you shot the movie. It seems like you were thinking about mimicking the male gaze in the way that you shot Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley.
FARGEAT: Yeah.
RASCOE: Like, what were you thinking with that?
FARGEAT: Yeah, that's absolutely that. You know, there are two different parts using the nudity in the movie. The first part is with Demi, Elisabeth in her bathroom. So it's really her facing herself, where the nudity is just the reality of her body for real, who she is, you know, without artifice, just looking at herself and judging herself so violently. And the other part is the outside world, which is represented by Sue, and how the body in the outside world is reduced to hypersexy body parts that put you in the public eyes and make you feel that that's the way you're going to be valued. And I'm the first defender, you know, for women to use their bodies the way they want to get that real freedom that just comes from you and not from the adjunctions that you can feel from the outside.
RASCOE: The men in the movie, I found fascinating because, I mean, look, they're pretty vile, most of them. How did you approach writing these characters? And most - the vast majority of the men in this movie - they don't seem to be under the same pressure.
FARGEAT: Oh, I think they're absolutely not. Like, the fact that we, as women, have to constantly be aware of how our body is going to be seen, is going to be judged - you have to deal with all that constantly every minute, and obviously, men don't. I think it's a fundamental, you know, difference, even if, of course, some men can have bodies issues and image issues. But I'm talking on a systemic level. It's really something very different.
RASCOE: I wanted to ask you, though, about genre filmmaking, and you've long been interested in that. And that's a world that doesn't have a lot of female filmmakers. What do you want to bring to this world of actual genre movies?
FARGEAT: It's true that all those type of movies in the past have been directed by male directors. I grew up fantasized and be, like, amazed by those creative universes that I was discovering. And now I think it's fantastic that younger generations can also see what's in the mind of women director. You know, what's our fears? What are our fantasies? What is our way to see the world, to fight with it, to, you know, be imaginative with it? And I'm super happy when I feel that new different voices take that genre to the world and to the audience.
RASCOE: That's Coralie Fargeat. Her new movie, "The Substance," is in theaters now. Thank you so much for being with us.
FARGEAT: Thank you for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
