Tag: Dennis Quaid

The Substance

GoMovieReviews Rating: ★★★1/2The Substance

Rated: R18+

Directed by: Coralie Fargeat

Written by: Coralie Fargeat

Edited by: Coralie Fargeat

Starring: Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid.

‘Pretty girls should always smile.’

A film of extremes, The Substance is a commentary about Hollywood’s middle-aged, white male’s view of the female form.

There is a male version of, the Other: a beautiful young male doctor introduces an aging fitness guru, Elizabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) to The Substance, himself a demonstration to the Oscar winning actress that she can create a better version of herself.

‘It will change your life.’

Goes to show that men are feeling the push to be beautiful as well.  But here the focus is on the aging actress, Elizabeth.

The action of ‘the substance’ is shown by the injection of green liquid into the joke of a raw egg.  The yoke then pushes out another yoke, like a clone of itself.

And the film continues with this demonstrative view of the procedure, of the process of aging, to the birth of a young body; the splicing of a pupil into two, to another eye growing within another, all shown in macro, close so there’s no-where else to look but at the unfiltered image of the beautiful juxtaposed with the grotesque.

Director and writer, Coralie Fargeat states, ‘Bodies here are going to be tyrannized, ridiculed, destroyed, the same way I truly believe society destroys women with all the rules that we are silently taught to follow.’

‘Women’s bodies. THE SUBSTANCE is a film about women’s bodies.’

After Elizabeth Sparkle is told by Harvey (Denis Quaid) – while feeding his face with prawns, sound included- the producer of her fitness show, that at age 50, It Stops, Elizabeth can’t help but think a better version of herself could be the answer to her lack of self-worth.

Elizabeth is the Matrix, the Other is Sue.

They are one person.

This is a visceral birth, with close-ups of blood, injections, the splitting of the spine to the gush of another pushing outwards from Elizabeth’s lifeless body.

To the high impact beauty of the Other, Sue.

It’s all pink shiny leotards and perfect bodies – Sue becomes the fresh new face of fitness.  She’s new and she’s young and she’s perfect.

It takes 7 days for Sue to rule the world.  And as human nature dictates, Sue wants more.

The concepts of the film are portrayed with clever devices, aging is shown with a static view of Sparkles Hollywood Star cracking in the pavement over time. Of people walking across the star, admiring the star, to then show snow and rain and dirt and feet and food being spilled across her star.  Like time has forgotten her face.  To the giant image of Elizabeth in her apartment with the fractured glass around her eye – a loss of perspective, her self-hatred pinned up on the wall.

It’s an interesting title, The Substance, the focus on the outer beauty and social comment about aging, about what’s supposed to go where, replacing the true substance of a person with a chemical that births a younger, fresher you.  Makes me wonder about Picasso’s cubism and his deconstruction of perspective.

Coralie Fargeat takes apart the idea of beauty and creates a satire with Elizabeth Sparkle using the mantra, ‘Take care of yourself,’ that Sue imitates with a wink because what is taking care of yourself when the expectation is to have medical procedures to try to stay young forever?

Fargeat comments, ‘This movie is going to be bloody gory. And it’s going to be bloody funny at the same time. Because I don’t know any stronger weapon than satire to show the world the absurdity of its own rules. And most importantly: I believe it’s going to be bloody timely. This is what this movie is about in the end. A liberation. An empowerment.’

Throughout the film, there’s an evolution of the grotesque as the weight of society’s expectation is perverted into an embrace of the gross with too much enthusiasm for my taste, to turn a fascinating film with a difference into something so awful it’s laughable.

This is a unique, determined and grotesque film.

This is body horror people.  Prepare yourself.

 

KIN

Rated: MKIN

Director: Jonathan & Josh Baker

Screenplay: Daniel Casey

Based on: short film ‘Bag Man’ by Jonathan & Josh Baker

Produced by: Shawn Levy, Dan Cohen, Jeff Arkuss, David Gross, Jesse Shapira

Starring: Jack Reynor, Zoë Kravitz, Dennis Quaid, James Franco, Myles Truitt.

This film must have presented a challenge in terms of marketing, because while on one level it is clearly a reality-based drama about a dysfunctional family in peril, with a cross-country road trip and pursuit by a particularly unsavoury gang of criminals, it also has a puzzling science fiction component that functions almost as an afterthought. This aspect doesn’t sit smoothly within the context of loss, betrayal and growing up, not until the end when it eventually makes sense, but as if it was part of another film that somehow wondered into this one.

The directors wanted to explore the concept of family, what makes a person part of a larger group when biological connections aren’t always what cause people to stick together. At the heart of Kin is a working class family headed by a gruff widower Hal (Dennis Quaid in top form) trying to raise his adopted African-American son Eli (Myles Truitt) better than he managed with his own biological son Jimmy (Jack Raynor, balancing on a tightrope of nerves and regret), who has just been released from prison after six years. Eli isn’t coping well at school and spends most of his free time scavenging in abandoned buildings for copper pipes to sell as scrap metal. On one occasion he finds several armoured, masked bodies left behind after what looks like a very serious battle, as well as a really cool high-tech weapon that he souvenirs, not aware of its true origins.

Jimmy’s ‘family’ on the inside, meanwhile, was part of a criminal gang headed by the loathsomely evil Taylor (James Franco in a shocker of a mullet), who protected Jimmy for a steep price and who now expects full repayment of that debt. Broke, unemployed Jimmy can’t pay, of course, but hatches a desperate plan to do so, to spare his family from becoming involved. This is where the movie switches gears into a road trip across the desolate yet beautifully photographed southern states of America, with Jimmy and Eli rediscovering their connection as brothers after six years apart, while being relentlessly pursued by Taylor’s gang as well as by two mysterious, helmeted bad ass dudes on motor cycles.

This is where the science fiction aspect finally comes to the fore, having been hinted at periodically during the film, when Eli initially discovered the weapon, one which only he can operate. This weapon comes in handy during a series of increasingly irresponsible and violent acts perpetrated by Jimmy with Eli’s help. I found Jimmy’s cluelessness worrying, since despite his prison stint he doesn’t seem to have the first idea about how to lay low and keep off everyone’s radar, or take better care of his vulnerable younger brother.

There is a sequence towards the end of the film where both brothers end up in a local police station, and in many ways it plays out like a variation on a similar scene from The Terminator, right down to someone hiding under a police desk, but who can tell whether this was a deliberate homage or just coincidence.

A second viewing of Kin would probably help make a lot more sense of what is happening, and identify clues that were casually scattered throughout. The problem is that on a first viewing, the science fiction element just seemed added on, not effectively integrated into the rest of what is a very realistically presented chase drama. It’s a shame this film probably won’t find a larger audience, because those who are after a hard-core science fiction story will be frustrated by how sparingly this aspect is utilised, while those who like their dramas grittily realistic may be irritated by the seemingly randomly inserted science fiction elements.

Subscribe to GoMovieReviews
Enter your email address for notification of new reviews - it's free!

 

Subscribe!