The Substance

Substance Abuse: An Exercise in Horror

or

"Oh, That This Too Too Solid Flesh Would Melt, Thaw and Resolve Itself Into a Dew! Or That the Everlasting Had Not Fix'd His Canon Against Self-Slaughter. Oh God!"
 

Submitted for your approval one Elizabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore), a flickering fitness guru for the "beauty-is-only-skin-deep" believing house-bound. A body-suited drill sergeant, who kills with kindness and only for your own good. Every stretch, every kick, every high-step is designed to make you as good as you can be because, after all, it works for her and she's shy a half-century. 

But Time waits for no man...or woman, for that matter, and Elizabeth Sparkle is about to learn something that will shock her down to her leg-warmers and trainers. It's a little lesson in Inevitability, in Life and the Television Industry, and it will take her the way Ponce deLeon traveled for the fabled Fountain of Youth. It's a little known path between Desperation Street and the Avenue of Self-Deception, which are all just detours that spill out...into The Twilight Zone.

Apologies to Rod Serling

The DNA of The Substance is very much that of a typical episode of TV's classic "Twilight Zone" in that it takes a mercurial person comfortable with their situation and up-ends it to which they have to act in an atypical way, even fantastic way, which then, ironically, comes back and bites them in the ass.

Elizabeth Sparkle is the host of a television work-out program that she has been doing for years and years, long after her career as an Academy Award-winning actress. On her 50th birthday, she is given a card, a present, red roses...and the pink slip. She has been sacked. Her network (run by her cartoonish producer, Harvey, played by Dennis Quaid) is (of course!) appreciative of her and her "long run" but, now, is another day and they're looking for a new host. A younger host. A sexier host. And, at 50, Elizabeth is not considered either of those things. She has lost some of her sparkle.

Most celebrities would consider product endorsements, a line of cosmetics or scents, maybe a tell-all book (how about a pod-cast?), but not Elizabeth. She stews. Then, a car accident—from which she emerges miraculously unhurt—lands her in the hospital, but bereft and in tears. A young orderly slips the sobbing Elizabeth a flash-drive with a note that says "It changed my life." The flash-drive has a presentation for "The Substance" and it's pitch is intriguing:

Have you ever dreamt of a better version of yourself? Younger, more beautiful, more perfect. One single injection unlocks your DNA, starting a new cellular division, that will release another version of yourself. This is the Substance. You are the matrix. Everything comes from you. Everything is you. This is simply a better version of yourself. You just have to share. One week for one and one week for the other. A perfect balance of seven days each. The one and only thing not to forget: You. Are. One. You can't escape from yourself.

That last bit probably serves as the warning of side-effects.

Elizabeth calls the number on the flash-drive and orders. She receives an address and a key-card and rushes to a run-down, seemingly abandoned site that discourages investigation. Inside, she comes to a pristine locker-room (it's amazing how the Substance organization runs like Amazon—except they answer the phone faster) and eagerly rushes back home to her posh condo to sample her wares.

The Substance kit has everything she'll need but it's an odd mix of syringes and tubing (lots of tubing), bizarre containers of "food" and sutures and bandages and vials, lots of vials. It's a bit intimidating, but Elizabeth takes the stuff to her "panic room" of a bathroom and injects herself with the "Activator," tripping out and falling like a dead lump to the floor.

Like most drugs, The Substance should come with warnings. Like, watch it somewhere in a chair that has something to grip onto. Because "The Activator" sequence is a horrific exercise where Elizabeth's naked body starts to roil and heave and mutate until the skin of her back starts to split like a busted seam and from it's zippered wound emerges..."Sue" (Margaret Qualley)—as she will call herself—who is literally "Born Sexy Yesterday." Sue stumbles about the bathroom, taking it all in, but once she reaches a mirror and sees herself, she calms down, stretches, and gets down to business. She has work to do.

Like clean up the mess. She sutures up Elizabeth's back (filmed in excruciating detail), hooks her up to the "food matrix" package—Elizabeth's going to be unconscious for a week—and experiences some head-spins and nose-bleeding, so she instinctively goes to the "Stabilizer" package, pulls out the hypodermics and inserts a needle into Elizabeth's spinal column and withdraws some liquid from the "matrix". Once she injects herself with it, she is good to go.

That is, go to the audition for Sparkle's old job, which she wins handily. Producer Harvey agrees that she can be allowed to work every other week (she explains that she has to take care of her elderly mother, which is true in a way), and everyone starts prepping for the new exercise show that will be flashier, sexy, and more provocative with other things on its mind than just body management. Elizabeth's happy. Sue's happy. Even Harvey is happy. What could go "worng"?

Everything, if you believe the altered cliché of "Nothing exceeds like success." Although Elizabeth and Sue "are one" they are experiencing different realities and so become of two minds about the situation, which results in bent rules, missed deadlines, and adverse effects on their twin. Things turn nasty very quickly, and given "The Activator Sequence" (which will seem tame in awhile) that nastiness is going to become bloody, gooey, and, at times, painful to watch.

Yet, you giggle throughout The Substance, not because it's inherently funny—maybe ironic—but because of the sheer verve of the thing...and the nerve. The twisted nerve. Writer-director Coralie Fargeat is not playing subtle here, but her playbook is spot-on with some arresting images and a boldness that you can't help but admire. It will ultimately fall apart (heh) as the third act will descend into a frothing, spewing gore-fest that is so over-the-top, you'll feel the need to shower afterwards. But, before it goes down the drain, it revels in its satire and makes its point about society's age-adverseness and obsession with form over substance. And the lesson that even fitness gurus should know something about karma.

Fargeat settles the look of the film directly and comfortingly in the sci-fi realm with a steely one-person perspective with wide-angle lenses, emulating Kubrick, but more directly from John Frankenheimer's similarly-themed Seconds. For some reason, that made me feel all warm and fuzzy. And, thematically, she has aspects and far-away echoes from dissimilar films as All About Eve and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?. The reverberations of past films are all over this, but Fargeat keeps it fresh and innovative.

And the performances are quite good—Quaid's over-the-top, but I think that was deliberate, with Qualley providing just enough of that Manson-girl predatoriness that she seems to inhabit. And Demi Moore does some of the bravest image-flagellation since Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard. Kudos. Brava.

We should all be so brave. But, like any pharmaceutical ad, we should probably end with some warnings. The Substance is not for the squeamish. The Sunstance is not for those who are offended by extensive nudity, whether attractive or not. Or react to needles, or open wounds, or festering sores, or a vast amount of red-colored Karo syrup being sprayed like a fire-hose, use caution. Or if you don't like being taught "lessons" in movies that run the danger of changing your encrusted attitude (but don't worry, there's a lot of scary stuff at the end).

 

Always read the label and make sure you read the possible side-effects. Do not take The Substance if you're allergic to The Substance. Nor, should you take it if you don't know yourself very well. And, of course, you should always take it...with a grain of salt.

Drive-Away Dolls

"Personal Effects"

or

"We Didn't Deserve...this Commodification."

It's been a few years since the Coen Brothers, Joel and Ethan, made a film—the last one was the western anthology The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (and Other Tales of the Western Frontier) back in 2018. That was for Netflix, and one wondered if they were tired of the business grind of securing funding and distribution deals developing theater-ready product. Buster Scruggs was episodic and eclectic, and it felt a bit like the Coen Brothers' version of The White Album, showing their strengths, but also their divisions, which seemed invisible in their one movie-one story efforts. 

 

The Wisdom of the Tribe (although one hates to credit any Entertainment Press with "wisdom") had always been that Ethan wrote and Joel directed, but the two contributed to each others' jobs so much that there was no clear demarcation line about who did what. They even shared editing duties (using the name "Roderick Jaynes" as a mutual nom de tranche).

So, it was a bit sad to hear that they were going to have a trial separation; one doesn't take this talk too seriously—how many times has Soderbergh quit and how many "last films" has Quentin Tarantino made? But, it seemed like the Coens meant it. Joel made a stark version of The Tragedy of MacBeth--that emphasized stagey minimal sets and maximum shadows, the better to appreciate the performances, especially of Denzel Washington and his wife, Frances McDormand. For his part, Ethan Coen hunkered down with his wife Tricia Cooke to produce a documentary, Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind.* Now, they've made a film of a script the two had been writing since 1999, Ethan directing and Tricia editing.

Drive-Away Dolls—or as its titled in the movie, Henry James' Drive-Away Dykes—is basically, a road movie with serio-comic violence. It tells the tale of a Mutt-and-Jeff lesbian duo—uptight, repressed Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan) and free-spirit Jamie (Margaret Qualley)—who take a break from their normal lives and relationship break-ups and the up-coming turn of the millennium ("Y Not 2k?") to go birding in Tallahassee. That's the original idea, although Jamie road-maps it out to visit every dyke bar en route. Then, there's the mode of transportation: they use a drive-away service, which gives them a car for a one-way trip as long as they deliver it to the destination on time.

Sounds great. But, the guy at the service gives them the wrong car. After they drive off, "Chief" (Colman Domingo) shows up with two goons, Arliss (Joey Slotnick) and Flint (C.J. Wilson) looking for it, and upon hearing that it's gone telephones his boss for instructions. Those turn out to be "beat up the service guy and find those girls," which would be easy if Jamie hadn't mapped out such a circuitous route from Philadelphia to Florida. So, while Arliss and Flint begin investigating several wild goose chases (and coming out the worse for it), Jamie and Marian take their meandering time and, inevitably, don't show up at the agreed-drop-off point on-time.

Perhaps if they knew what was in the trunk of the car they're driving they'd be a little more responsible (well, Marian, anyway), but a blow-out along the way forces them to look for a spare and what do they find?

Well, I ain't sayin' (so no spoilers here), but it's a member in the long line of McGuffins and Whats-its in movies from Kiss Me Deadly, Repo Man and Pulp Fiction (well, the last two filching it directly from Kiss Me Deadly) and we've already seen one guy (Pedro Pascal) get killed for it in a prologue at the beginning of the film. And it's what Arliss and Flint and Chief and the guy on the other end of the phone are after and they'll do anything to get it back. Thus, intrigue, threat of danger, and mystery.

But, really, not really. Just from my description you can tell that Drive-Away Dolls hallmarks quite a few Coen Brothers traits—the contrasty duos (but without Steve Buscemi, this time!), the ginned-up danger, the what's-it-all-mean empty space that's supposed to be wrapped up tidily at the end. Except for the lesbian angle, it's a little bit rote, and more-than-a-bit familiar while still striving be be out-RAGE-ous...think along the lines of past Coens like Burn After Reading or Intolerable Cruelty, or even The Ladykillers, where there's something about it that just doesn't gel, although you know they're throwing everything but Joel's kitchen sink at it.

And that may be the issue. There's a formality to Joel Coen's direction that just isn't here—a rigor amidst the dishevelment—that cements things into a cohesive package that feels of a piece. Brother Ethan just ratchets up the lampoonery as if he was trying to goose the material with false energy. Compound it with Cooke's editing whimsy with some graphic transitions that are a bit too Tarantino-cute on top of it all. It doesn't pay off. And there's maybe a couple flash-backs too many, although the out-of-left-field psychedelic sequences (with cameos by Miley Cyrus) associated with the contraband aluminum suitcase ultimately seem more essential the more one thinks about it.

It sure tries hard (and the actors, which also include Beanie Feldstein and Matt Damon, give above and beyond, with Qualley and Viswanathan the stand-outs as the fast-talking and the dead-panning hub around which everyone revolves) but Drive-Away Dolls, even with its pedal to the metal, never quite achieves the anarchic spirit it so desperately wants to convey.

The word is that the Brothers are re-uniting to make a horror movie. I get shivers just thinking about it.

* I've seen it, but won't write about it much. It consists of archival footage of Lewis performances and interviews, edited by Cooke in a fairly tight summation of his life and career. But, interestingly, it has little editorial point of view, other to note at the end that Lewis lived longer than his musical  peers, two of his kids, and a couple of his seven ex-wives...and that, he was a self-taught piano player...even re-teaching himself after a 2019 stroke. Amazing, given his instinctual, visceral keyboarding.

Poor Things

Candy'd

or

"I Have Found This World To Be Full of Sugar and Violence"

 

Yorgos Lanthimos' film of Poor Things immediately grabs you by the "hairy business" and never lets go. Even the titles starting the movie refuse to be conventional, emerging like stitching around a baby blanket. Then, the film starts proper with a low-res black-and-white sequence shot with a distorting wide-angle lens of Bella Baxter (Emma Stone) waddling around the ornate interior of the work-home of Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe), eccentric scientist and anatomist, whom Bella calls "God."

And so he is, scarred and etched by much surgery-presumably self-inflicted-he teaches anatomy at a London University, where he regularly dissects corpses for the education of his students and puts them back together for his. "What's the purpose of putting the organs back in?" asks one of his audience. "My amusement!" He bellows, and one dare not question him.

Evidently. His estate is populated by hybrid creatures constructed and tended by him: pug-ducks and pig-chickens (with their heads swapped out), all experiments to test the limits of what can be done. Speaking of predecessors, he says they "pushed the boundaries of what was known. And paid the price."

But, Bella is the most important one, an opportunity that arose by accident, and Dr. Baxter made the most of it...uh, her. Now, he tracks Bella's development, her growing vocabulary, her skill-sets, all in an environment meant to keep her safe, despite her abundant curiosity. Bella wants to learn, most particularly about the world outside the Baxter flat, and that, as he notes, is a problem: "So many things in the world can kill you, Bella."

Still, she seeks to learn. Baxter recruits one of his more sensitive students, Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef) to do the research work that his busy schedule can't accommodate, and, given Bella's combined increasing abilities and interests, someone has to keep an eye on her so she doesn't get in trouble. Dr. Godwin allows a brief foray into the park, but even that doesn't go smoothly, and it's only through the use of chloroform that he and Max are able to get her home.

But, things start to go south when Bella becomes sexually aware, and Godwin suggests that Max marry her as there is obvious affection between the two of them. A marriage contract is proposed and Godwin brings in lawyer Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo) to draw it up. But, Wedderburn is unscrupulous and a cad and his interest in who would inspire such a contract makes him seek out Bella and propose that, instead of marrying Max, that she go off with him on a "grand adventure" traveling the world. To Bella, this seems the best of all possible ideas and she insists that she travel with Wedderburn and will marry Max when she returns. Dr. Godwin objects and tries to warn her, but, ultimately lets her go, realizing that Bella is "a being of free will" and can make up her own mind.

Of course, Wedderburn's intentions are the worst, indulging Bella in what she describes as "furious jumping" and acting a man of the world when all he really wants is control over her. Plus, being sheltered for all her time at Baxter's flat, Bella is unused to the "polite society" that Wedderburn loathes, and still has instinctual issues ("I must go punch that baby!") to the point where he commands her that she is to say only three things at dinner conversation: "Delightful" "How marvelous" and "How do they get the pastry so crisp." She starts to assert herself, slapping Duncan and making her own friends, while he drinks and gambles and begins a downward spiral of self-pity.

It's a coming-of-age story of the innocent learning about the world and the hardships and disillusionments that are learned along the way as her travels teach her in ways being cloistered in the doctor's care could not. Experience is the best teacher, whether you're "Candide" or "Candy" and Bella's travels, the people she meets, the hardships she endures, the sacrifices she makes are all in the benefit of her becoming a complete human being by the time she makes her way back to London.

You might think you've heard this one before, but you've certainly never seen anything like Poor Things. As anyone who's seen his The Favourite can attest, Lanthimos does things differently, using different film formats, lenses, distortions, and with no regard to realism or verisimilitude. His extreme world-building is not unlike Wes Anderson's or Tim Burton's, or Terry Gilliam's, but with a free-wheeling scatter-shot explosion of any expectations or any sort in a delirious mash-up of Dali and Magritte surrealism that ignore the laws of physics and architectural rigor while staying true to the possibilities of psychology and motivation. Think of the films of Tarsem Singh and tilt them another 90° and you'll be closer to Lanthimos' wheel-house.

Even while you're mind is reeling and your eyes are agog at what he presents, one can't help but be amazed at the performances he gets. As creepy as the visage of Willem Dafoe is in this film, his performance as a mad scientist is still heart-felt and, as bizarre as it is, just a little wise. Mark Ruffalo hasn't been this funny...ever. 

But, the miracle of this movie is Emma Stone. One doesn't want to reveal too much of the movie...or the "why" of it...but her Bella Baxter starts out as a fully-formed child and progresses to a cerebral philosophical mind while taking every idiosyncrasy and playing it with a crack comic timing that makes you shake your head in wonder at the inventiveness and sheer "go-for-broke" ingenuity of it. For all the special effect wizardry going on in the thing, she is the glue that holds the thing together for a solid 2½ hours. And her transformation from wobbling infant to sophisticated lady is a triumph. It's all pretty astounding.

And the movie will make an excellent double bill with Barbie.

The Nice Guys

How Awful About Amelia
or
"Kids these Days..." ("Don't Say 'and stuff.' Just say, Dad, there are whores here.")

Shane Black excels at "buddy" movies—he did, after all, create the Lethal Weapon series. That's a good thing and a bad thing: when he does something like Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, he comes up with a mystery, pushed off-kilter by the clashing personalities of his protagonists; when he does something like Iron Man 3 with a clearly dominant personality, the movie lurches out of control from its lack of counter-point. The Nice Guys has no such issues and actually improves on his formula.

I have to confess: any PI movie set in the 70's that starts out with the funk-shimmer of "Papa was a Rolling Stone" is already on my good side. When it establishes locale and detail by doing a rear-view fly-over of a decaying "Hollywood" sign to settle over a ranch-house in the valley at the base of that sign it shows someone is being careful with the atmosphere. Black follows the night-time perambulations of a child-denizen wandering the house who manages to score by finding a copy of dad's "Cavalier" magazine and then becomes distracted by a centerfold that he doesn't see a sports-car sailing off a cliff overhanging his backyard and bouncing through his house, you're seeing someone saying something about a world out of whack in the most surprising and arresting way possible.

And it keeps getting better.

Like most "buddy" movies, the two don't start as "buddies." Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe) is a lone wolf and is the muscle-arm of the detective business. People hire him to be tough and threaten. He's been at this long enough to have eliminated the tough stuff; the rules are simple: people are persuaded easier when they're hurting and it gives them to know that he is serious. Business rarely needs to be repeated. It is a bad side of the business, but he has a good side; he is recognized (when he is recognized, which is rarely) as "the diner guy" who disarmed a gun-man and beat him into unconsciousness with his own weapon. It made the news and it was good for business, if beating up people is your business. He does his work efficiently and with humor, even providing helpful medical advice to help with the future hospitalization. He's good at his job, but a bit of a troglodyte.

Holland March (Ryan Gosling) is a widower with an 11 year old daughter in tow. He's the brains end of PI work, but that is being generalized and charitable. He specializes in the bizarre cases that most detectives would dismiss as a waste of time. Holland doesn't think it's a waste as long as money is being wasted his way. He has sharp instincts, but absolutely no physical skills and his mental facilities are being impaired by his habit of drinking himself into a stupor. The death of his wife has thrown him into an incapacitating depression, and it is only his caretaker-daughter Holly (Angourie Rice), 11 going on 35, that keeps him on his flat-feet and peeping.

Holland has been making the rounds, searching for Amelia (Margaret Qualley), a girl who has disappeared in the L.A. of 1977. It is not a good place, rife with crime, prostitution, porn and drugs—in other words, not unlike the Los Angeles of today, but with more water. Amelia is a typical missing-persons case, she's a headstrong runaway, privileged, entitled, mad at her mother (Kim Basinger) and determined to get back at her, how is anybody's guess. Holland does some interviewing at local clubs and bars, but Amelia is untraceable.

She should have asked Healy. Amelia has just hired him to beat Holland up and warn him off the case, breaking an arm that March has already bandaged from a breaking-and-entering gone wrong. He also gives a nice little back injury that, considering all the running around that goes on towards the end of the picture, seems to heal itself magically—either that, or he has wonderful muscle relaxants.

It is only when Healy is attacked in his office (above The Comedy Store, which is different) by a couple of toughs (Keith David, Beau Knapp) who are also looking for Amelia, that he begins to think that there may be more to this than just a simple thump-for-hire. Maybe March is working for the same guys who are threatening him or maybe not, but whatever the reason, Amelia seems to be a popular girl and Healy wants to find her so he can find out why he is also being threatened. Time to combine resources.

Back-track to March, who, understandably, is pained to have anything to do with Healy, but their mutual self-interest not to be shot persuades them to pool their resources Amelia-tracking and maybe find out who the people are who are targeting both of them. The two look for leads at a protest rally against L.A.'s smog conditions organized by Amelia and meet an acquaintance of hers named Chet (Jack Kilmer) a self-described "projectionalist," who takes them to the former residence of Amelia's boyfriend, "former" as it has recently been destroyed in a fire. The boyfriend's former employer was a porn producer who is hosting a party at his cliff-side mansion. 

It's an eventful party: March's daughter, Holly, stows away in the trunk of March's car, Healy runs into the toughs who roughed him up earlier, and March discovers the body of the porn producer, after drunkenly falling over a balcony railing and tumbling down the cliff. Oh, and they run into Amelia, who flees with Holly after being threatened by one of the thugs.

Things bump along, as the two detectives adjust to their working styles (or lack of them), just long enough to realize that they are out of their depth, the forces they're investigating being organized and a couple steps ahead of them, so that things get resolved but messily.

The movie is a bit shaggy-dog as far as clues-continuity—there are some leaps in logic and convenient encounters that only occur to you after the movie is over, as it entertains and Crowe and Gosling work overtime with a mis-matched relationship that, at times, recalls Abbott and Costello in their extremes (Gosling's March, when sober, has a funny coward's way of reacting to moments of stress)

Yes, that is a giant bee in March's back-seat, and, no, it's not a drug joke.

But, there's a nice through-line to the thing. The kids. While the adults are preoccupied with shuffling money around and their own narcissistic amoral short-term agendas, the kids are left to their own devices and having to make their way through, wondering if they have a future. The kids are alright, but they're judging, while the adults wander through the blighted glitz-scape accepting things for what they are, which is beyond their control. They've given up on the long-term, which, for the kids, hasn't even happened yet. 

And they're pissed. They're trying to understand the world they're growing into, to become adults, but they're getting the sense that their elders have given up on being adults themselves, so, if they're going to have any hopes and dreams besides having change in their pockets, they have no examples to look to. And feeling a definite disconnect with this L.A. world, like being little aliens in the landscape. No wonder they're insecure and going off the handle—no one wants to hold the handle! It's a latch-key world with deadbeat parents who not only do not care about doing the right thing, they've lost track of what that might be. In most of these "peeper" movies, it's the detective looking for answers who provides the moral center by his reactions to his discoveries. Not this movie. It's the kids, who are also looking for answers, who are the moral compass, pointing to true.

In most instances, the "kids are smarter than adults" trope comes off as precious or stupid, but The Nice Guys manages to make a great case for it, placing it in this genre, in this city, at this time. You tend to believe it. And wonder how they survived.

March demonstrates the "bad-breath tie" to Healy
(which sure looks improvised).