For as long as she can remember, horror films have been for Coralie Fargeat (Paris, 48 years old) what has filled her cinematic and cinephile dreams and visions. She mentions David Cronenberg and John Carpenter as her greatest references when she started thinking about being a director at 16. Which, even today, adds another step to the difficulty of entering the industry as a woman, of getting finance a movie. That would explain, in part, why 14 years passed between his first short (Telegram me, 2003) and his first full-length (Revenge, 2017); and exactly 20 years since his second short, Reality+, where he was able to look at the themes and forms that interested him, and his second feature, The Substance (in theaters on October 11), premiered at the Cannes Festival, where it won the award for best screenplay after a 13-minute ovation and a general gratitude for recovering an iconic actress of the nineties, Demi Moore.
“The two films, Reality+ and The substance, They are related, because they revolve around the idea that there will always be a better version of you,” explains the director, still euphoric after its premiere in Cannes. “We always fantasize about being better because everything around you makes you feel that you are not good enough or that until you achieve perfection, or what you consider perfection, you will always be a worse version of yourself.”
The physical, verbal and emotional violence towards women, the necessary effort, the ignoring, the self-hatred and the obstacles that women put on themselves are at the heart of the cinema of this director who wants to provoke as much as she wants to entertain. and generate a small change. “We didn’t have so many opportunities in the past, but today only in French cinema are there other directors talking about women and our bodies in other ways, Julia Ducournau (Titan), Noémie Merlant with The girls on the balcony… I love that we are having so much impact and opportunities to tell what we have inside, but we have to continue breaking the wall and rebuild it by placing the bricks in a different order,” he says, laughing.
Because, no matter how seriously he speaks, he does not lose sight of the need to do so for entertainment. “That’s why horror is the best way to talk about certain topics, because it allows you to be excessive, to release your madness,” he explains. The way in which the woman’s body is observed, judged and criticized is violent, “so the gender of the body horror “He is the best to tell that violence.” Without skimping on blood, guts or gore. In The Substance, Demi Moore is a former star of the fitness televised; desperate because they continue to look at her with desire. She orders a mysterious product, called “the substance,” that will create (literally) a better, younger version of her (Margaret Qualley). It speaks of verbal, psychological, emotional violence, self-inflicted violence due to the need for validation, even more complicated after 40. “Dennis Quaid plays the embodiment of that violence. It is the symbol of situations that we still experience and I did not want to cut myself, because those comments and humiliations are the mirror in which we look at ourselves, and the way in which we torture our body is a reflection of that external violence,” Fargeat continues.
The substance was born when, at the age of 40, he realized that he was getting carried away by dangerous ideas. “I thought that because of my age it was the end, that I would no longer have a place in society, that no one would care anymore… I am an educated woman, a feminist, and still these thoughts entered my head,” she reflects. “I wanted to talk about how difficult it is to accept the passage of time, the myth of Dorian Gray taken to all levels. I’m talking about age, but also about not accepting the idea of the perfect body… It has happened to me at every stage of my life. When you are young your ass is not good and neither are your tits, you grow up and your tits already seem good to you, but another part of your body is no longer good… That comes from what we receive from the outside, from that male gaze that has structured our world. Other eyes have begun to come in, but it is not enough.”
As soon as he started writing the script, he knew that he needed a protagonist who “was a myth and a symbol.” Demi Moore, 90s beauty icon, personified the message of The Substance. “I thought about her after reading her autobiography, which I recommend,” he points out, “I discovered a strong woman, super innovative in her time, intelligent, instinctive and always out of the ordinary, so I realized that she would understand this very well. story that is out of the norm.” He accepted instantly. “She was willing to take the risks of exposing herself so much, of getting naked, she trusted me and I think she saw right away that she could create something very strong as an actress.” For the protagonist of Striptease either An indecent proposition, The substance It means a new stage and putting the focus not on her, as a mature woman forgotten by the industry, “not being a victim,” she said in Cannes, but directing it to the problem itself and who causes it.
