"The Substance" explores the dark side of society's beauty obsession

"Old age ain’t no place for sissies,” Bette Davis once famously quipped, and neither is “The Substance,” writer/director Coralie Fargeat’s outrageous, audacious, and ambitious twist on wanting “a younger, better self.” This bloody body horror satire is sure to have viewers gasping and laughing throughout, especially during its over-the-top finale. From the opening scene of an egg being injected with a serum and replicating itself to a wordless montage depicting Hollywood starlet Elisabeth Sparkle losing her luster, “The Substance” is cleverly told. Fargeat seems to enjoy playing with this theme, an obvious gender-reverse homage to and riff on “The Picture of Dorian Gray.” It does not go unnoticed that Sue removes a large wall-size picture of a young Elisabeth hanging in her stylish apartment, or that a billboard featuring Sue hangs outside the floor to ceiling window of Elisabeth’s apartment. “The Substance” is shrewdly made — Fargeat showcases immense talent and vision lacing her film with aural and visual cues, but she eventually goes off the rails with the outrageousness, diluting the potent feminist messages about the dangers of body modification, and the consequences of messing with science.