THE SUBSTANCE (in theatres)

Mephistopheles is cackling from his eighth level of hell, as “Elizabeth Sparkle” (magically sculpted by Demi Moore) succumbs to her Faustian fallacy; a perpetual mirrored image of her ingénue years; rather implausible since we meet her on her 50th birthday. Director Coralie Fargeat (48 years-old) pounces on the ubiquity of denial, futility of staving off the aging process and the multi-billion-dollar business promising, pointlessly eventual unrequited dreams. “The Substance” without shame or subtlety is gorgeously filmed, crafted with all the ambiguities gracing a plastic, shallow, hollow, empty ephemeral meme. In its “horror” it is delicious.

Astounding performances (pivotally Demi Moore) ignite the premise of a life-altering drug proving viable, provided you religiously follow the rules; “Sue” is hatched from her “host” Elizabeth; an alter-ego from Hades. Margaret Qualley is a consummate clone: celestial countenance, simulated Aphrodite, dazzling vapidity; her obsession with adulation transcends the “rules”, auguring ruination. Dennis Quaid as “Harvey” is the quintessential, superficial, caddish TV executive (a blatant mimic of Harvey Weinstein) is lushly churlish and curtly crass.

“The Substance” shares in the themes of “beauty” and the bleakness of a wrinkled demise: “Skincare”, “Uglies”, “Adaline”, the iconic “Curious Case of Benjamin Button”; a uniquely transformative film is 2011’s “The Skin I Live In”, indelible, a horrifying and hardly conceivable, possibility.

“The Substance” is extreme, an unrealistic metaphor for beauty resting “in the eye of the beholder” but flirting at its eerie core is the prospect that the mirror, echoing sagging jowls, receding hairline, drooping eyelids, instead of shunning, accept as badges of beauty, earned by a life fulfilled.

THREE & ½ STARS!!!

Peneflix