‘The Substance’ has divided audiences at the Cannes Film Festival, but Moore is drawing the best reviews of her career. And it’s another role that allows the star of ‘Ghost’ and ‘Indecent Proposal’ to distort, subvert and exploit her physical form on film, writes Adam White

People have been looking at Demi Moore’s body for more than 40 years. On the cover of Vanity Fair in 1991, nude and seven months pregnant. Rippling with muscles in GI Jane. Under strip club spotlights in Striptease. In her new horror film The Substance – which has become the most talked-about premiere at the Cannes Film Festival – we see her body again. Then again and again. But it’s gnarlier this time. A younger woman hatches out of Moore’s back, leaving behind two macabre flaps of flesh on either side of her spine. Over the course of the film, Moore ages and rots, every crease of her skin filmed with gooey sadism. It may be her shock ticket to an Oscar.

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The film, from the French director Coralie Fargeat, has proven divisive already, with some critics calling it “an audacious masterpiece”, and others calling it tired hagsploitation with little to actually say about women, age or Hollywood. Regardless, Moore is earning the best reviews of her career. “Moore has never really taken a risk of this nature before,” wrote IndieWire’s David Ehrlich. “The places that risk takes her in the movie’s absolutely bonkers final act will have your jaw on the floor, if it’s even still attached to your body.” “Ripping into her best big-screen role in decades, Moore is fearless,” raved the BBC. “Extraordinary,” added The Telegraph, with Variety remarking that Moore’s performance “is rippled with anger, terror, despair, and vengeance”. There have been suggestions she could surprise-win the Best Actress prize at Cannes, which would then thrust her straight to the top of prediction lists for next year’s Oscars.

  • PiJiNWiNg@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    3·
    1 month ago

    I hate how long it took me to find the title of the movie, its called “The Substance” for everyone else.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    1·
    1 month ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    In the film, which received a rapturous 11-minute standing ovation after its Cannes premiere last night, Moore plays a faded Hollywood superstar, whose yearning for youth leads her to an experimental procedure: once injected with a mysterious fluid, she births an alternate version of herself (played by Margaret Qualley) – someone sparkling with sex appeal and youthful pep, whose body she can only ever inhabit for a total of seven days at a time, before she must revert back to her older self.

    “The places that risk takes her in the movie’s absolutely bonkers final act will have your jaw on the floor, if it’s even still attached to your body.” “Ripping into her best big-screen role in decades, Moore is fearless,” raved the BBC.

    (Her demand for pay parity with the male movie stars of the Nineties didn’t earn her media respect back then, but a snarky nickname: “Gimme Moore”).

    In the former, her character turns to exotic dance to pay the bills; Moore’s nudity and her sculpted, toned physique made up the entirety of the film’s marketing campaign.

    No one really spoke about her acting – her determined resolve in GI Jane, or the haunting image of her keeling over in agony in the TV film If These Walls Could Talk, her character having undergone a clandestine abortion.

    The Substance is, in a sense, a bold move for Moore, and there is a meta thrill to her playing an actor mourning her heyday and fixated on age and experimental plastic surgery (she had to repeatedly deny in the mid-Noughties that she’d spent $300,000 on cosmetic work ahead of filming 2003’s Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle).

    The original article contains 935 words, the summary contains 276 words. Saved 70%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

    • Poppa_Mo@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      1 month ago

      I would say the news is in the idea that she may win a huge award for a gross role, and it being undeniably a horror movie makes it more newsworthy.

      Horror has been the red-headed step-child of film for quite some time. In spite of it being one of the biggest money making genres.

      So, huge successful actor who has never done horror before, bringing more attention to the genre on a different level.

      This is more newsworthy than X is now banging Y.

      • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝OPMAEnglish
        3·
        1 month ago

        Also:

        Regardless, Moore is earning the best reviews of her career.

        So… Actress gets best reviews of her long career, may be up for awards.