The body horror film The Substance is the talk of the festivals this year. Coralie Fargeat's latest film stars Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley and it promises nudity from both of them. The actresses have been on a press tour talking about these scenes and their bodies, so there is a lot to say about The Substance. Here's what we can expect from the nudity in te film.
The plot of Coralie Fargeat's latest film follows an aging celebrity played by Demi Moore who uses a black-market drug that promises to replicate her cells to create a younger version of herself.
Fargeat got a great deal of attention for her debut feature film Revenge in which a mistress comes along on a guys' hunting trip and everything goes violently wrong. She has also directed episodes of The Sandman and Reality+, but this film shows us who Fargeat is as a director.
Moore was interviewed on The New York Times podcast The Interview in which she talked at length about being at peace with her body. She went through so much to make her body perfect for the stripper film Striptease. A few years later, she had to appear strong and muscular in the film G.I. Jane. She even shaved her head! She had to modify her already perfect body for both films.
In this film, we see Demi Moore nude a lot. The director uses horror angles to show off the women's bodies, emphasizing the body horror that is both physical and psychological. With these angles and shots, the director is making the point that the obsessive desire for bodily perfection is a horror in and of itself. It is the thing that haunts these women and it is what possesses them, like a poltergeist, to make decisions like these.
When the interviewer asked her if she would take a similar substance, choosing to give up the wisdom accrued with age for a perfect body, Moore laughed and responded, "I wish I didn't have to choose!". Well said! I don't think she has to choose. She looks skintastic and she's in her 60s.
Moore really does look amazing! Interestingly, there are quite a few films this festival season that focus on age and the body. Sebastian Stan's film A Different Man is similar in that he is an actor who undergoes surgery to look different for a part. Elizabeth Moss plays an aging actress in the movie Shell where she goes to a wellness facility that promises to help her retain her youth.
Gia Coppola's latest film The Last Showgirl is about an aging showgirl played by Pamela Anderson. Cinema is currently fascinated by aging and what that does to the body and mind.
Whatever the psychological reasons for that may be - social media serving our faces to us on a daily basis, the wellness industry, 90s Hollywood A-listers physically aging - it appears to be a great time to be an aging actress in Hollywood. Based on their nude scenes, these ladies have barely aged a day!
00:16:57 Demi bares her butt cheeks in a tiny thong, as well as her breasts, at first via see-through bra that quickly goes "Bye Bye" and then it's bare hootage, baby! (1 min 31 secs)
