What ‘The Substance’ Says About French Women and Age
October 23, 2024
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Typically, I am not a horror movie person. I can sit through just about anything, but I’ll have nightmares about it for weeks after. However, I make an exception every couple of years when a movie that comes out looks like it might be good enough to risk it. I took this chance on The Substance last weekend, the body horror flick starring Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley, about an aging celebrity who takes the titular substance in order to produce a younger, more beautiful version of herself.
While I won’t go into any spoilers, I will say that it’s one of the best films I’ve seen in a while, a haunting satirical commentary on the expectations society puts on women when it comes to looks and aging. It manages to be both campy and hilarious, while also thought-provoking and truly grotesque—It’s no wonder The Substance won this year’s Best Screenplay award at the Cannes Film Festival.
The film was written and directed by Coralie Fargeat, the French filmmaker behind the 2017 action thriller Revenge. And though its script is in English, it was shot in the South of France, where exterior scenes were made to mimic Los Angeles.
There’s a bit of irony in a French woman (herself in her late 40s) making a film about an American woman refusing to age gracefully. Culturally, Americans tend to hold French women to a particular beauty standard, which envisions all françaises of a certain age as thin, white, and elegant, older for sure, but still highly sexualized. We accept that Isabelle Huppert will continue to play glamorous vixens into her 70s, and we are more than willing to fawn over the snide and sexy Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu (61) in Emily in Paris. Even Netflix’s recent murder mystery flop, The Perfect Couple, eked out every stereotype in the book when it cast Isabelle Adjani (69) as a blasé, morally bankrupt seductress who carries on affairs with both father and son.
Similar to the “French women don’t get fat” stereotype (which we’ve previously debunked), media has perpetuated the idea that French women “age gracefully,” eschewing plastic surgery while still managing to look great well into their golden years. It’s a big marketing point of French beauty products, which capitalize on the fallacy that all French women guard some kind of hidden trove of beauty secrets that allow them to look flawless at any age.
The truth of the matter, of course, is that French women do “get work done,” particularly those ageless queens of the silver screen. They may opt for procedures that are a bit more subtle than their American counterparts, but anyone telling you French actresses look that way because of their night cream is trying to sell you something.
Because of this, perhaps Coralie Fargeat knew that her message would read easier on an American face. But while the faces might be American, the body imagery leans French. Some of the (admittedly horrifying) prosthetics that feature near the end of The Substance were actually inspired by the works of Niki de Saint Phalle, the famed French sculptor. Her “Nanas,” which were joyful, voluptuous female figures, meant to be celebrations of liberated womanhood, are turned on their head in Fargeat’s frame of reference. I won’t say more, but I would recommend looking them up if you’ve already seen the film.
Afterwards, if you’re looking for a few more French horror films to add to your list, check out our Halloween watch guide here. (In particular, you may want to seek out Julia Ducournau’s films Titane and Raw, for more female directed and centered French horror.) If all that blood and gore leaves you squeamish, fret not—our film critic Andrea Meyer has also put together a ranking of the best French films at this month’s New York Film Festival. Pick your poison…
