The Substance (Coralie Fargeat, 2024)

[tenia]

Best screenplay is based on the result on-screen. It most likely wasn't the original draft, maybe it got reshoots later, and so on, but what's judged is what can be judged when watching the movie, ie the final result.

I think that of all things I could saved from it, screenplay definitely wouldn't be it. It's a one-note movie with monodimensional characters, going through one of the most unsubtle journey I've seen recently. The movie keeps hammering every single point it tries to make, and doesn't even deepen these points despite its ample runtime. Fargeat spoke about what she wanted to tackle and sure it's there, but once she tells them, there's nothing more. Take Quaid's character for instance : he's a walking cliché, though a fun one, but he's the same when meeting him at the tenth minute than when leaving him at the end of the movie.

The Substance isn't so much a message movie with some genre, but a genre movie with a starting subtext point that could have been expanded as much in a 50 min Black Mirror episode.

In such a context, with poorly written characters and superficial subtexts, that doesn't leave much in terms of "oh wow the writing is so good, give it a price".
Acting and direction ? Oh yeah, ok, I can see that.
Mise en scène ? Sure, definitely.
But screenplay ? I've seen plenty of positive feedbacks about the movie, absolutely none of them made a single argument for its writing.

[Altair]

Surely this is a case of Most Audacious Concept being confused for Best Screenplay - although this surely deserves Best Makeup at the Oscars.

[MichaelB]

that being said I don't understand why this film didn't deserve to win best screenplay.

Because it started out promisingly and then turned into an incoherent, repetitive, bludgeoningly obvious mess?

There are lots of things to praise in this film, but the script absolutely wasn't one of them - and it's particularly frustrating because a better script and a tighter edit might well have produced something of a classic.

And of course you can judge the quality of the script from the final product. Although, interestingly, the Oscars took until 1940 to create a separate category of Best Original Screenplay, and it's hugely fitting that its first recipient was Preston Sturges (for The Great McGinty), as Sturges is a perfect example of a screenwriter so formally dazzling that even if a director mangled his intentions - as Michell Leisen allegedly did on Remember the Night - the quality of the writing remains clear. (I subtitled this one for the hard of hearing, and every syllable was a joy to type out.)

[Mr Sausage]

I suspect they didn't like the film enough to award it for any other category, but still wanted to acknowledge the importance of its feminist message, so they gave it best screenplay, which is as much to say they gave it the one award that is conceptual in nature.

I don't meant that to sound cynical. Even fans of the film would admit it's the gusto of the filmmaking and performances that make the thing work, not the thin Twilight Zone-ish plot and flattened characters. That just leaves the feminist message, which has a lot of political and social relevance.

[mhofmann]

Even fans of the film would admit it's the gusto of the filmmaking and performances that make the thing work, not the thin Twilight Zone-ish plot and flattened characters. That just leaves the feminist message, which has a lot of political and social relevance.

But is the relevance still as firm if the message is bludgeoned into your head with a sledgehammer over and over again?
I think the film is doing itself a serious disservice by being so... unsubtle and repetitive.

[Kracker]

Even fans of the film would admit it's the gusto of the filmmaking and performances that make the thing work, not the thin Twilight Zone-ish plot and flattened characters. That just leaves the feminist message, which has a lot of political and social relevance.

But is the relevance still as firm if the message is bludgeoned into your head with a sledgehammer over and over again?
I think the film is doing itself a serious disservice by being so... unsubtle and repetitive.

Yeah, the whole movie suffers from editing. I felt like I was watching a rough cut of the movie. All the unsubtlety and repetitiveness could have been fixed by trimming it way down. Even the bookending scenes with the Hollywood Star went on for way too long. And Coralie doesn't respect the audience enough to let them "get it" like with the old man in diner scene. Trimming it down to just the audience seeing his portwine stain lets the audience figure it out just fine. Though not into the runtime of a Tales From the Crypt episode as people suggest; the whole procedural aspect of The Substance and the gradual week-to-week degradation of Eliza/Sue's respecting the balance, not to mention how this movie takes this well beyond where people would have normally ended it, fills up a lot of story. A TFTC episode would have involved a simple one-step youth replenishing step and subsequent immediate backfiring.

Highly enjoyed this for taking an existing idea, pushing it as far as it can go and giving it a message, but it does get rather gratuitous.

And of course you can judge the quality of the script from the final product.

Yeah, the final film is essentially the final draft. You continually rewrite the script during the filming and editing process.

[therewillbeblus]

I have a friend who got a lot out of the film from a totally different angle of addiction - specifically, the practice of not taking/stocking up prescribed meds for a week and then abusing them the next week; rinse, cycle, repeat. The movie doesn’t necessarily invite a lot of ambiguity as to what it’s aiming for, but I do think it works along those lines - including the physical and emotional consequences/damage one wakes up to after an extended binge

[nicolas]

MUBI announced that the film will be available for streaming on Halloween. No idea whether it's just one day or longer.

[JamesF]

Though not into the runtime of a Tales From the Crypt episode as people suggest; the whole procedural aspect of The Substance and the gradual week-to-week degradation of Eliza/Sue's respecting the balance, not to mention how this movie takes this well beyond where people would have normally ended it, fills up a lot of story. A TFTC episode would have involved a simple one-step youth replenishing step and subsequent immediate backfiring.

As I'd been the one to invoke TFTC, I didn't mean to imply the plot of The Substance could be neatly squeezed into thirty minutes (although it arguably could!), more that despite all that additional bloated runtime, there was no more irony, complexity, or - sorry - substance in the film that you'd find in an episode of TFTC, or indeed any of EC Comics' screen descendants where shallow, rather conservative moralising serves as a flimsy excuse for gory mayhem.

[tenia]

While I agree with most of this, it did seem to me the opposite : it didn't seem to me that "moralising" served as a flimsy excuse for gory mayhem, but that gory mayhem served as a cover for "moralising".
In any case, we do agree the movie, whatever Fargeat thought about it in terms of pace, had absolutely 0 need to be this long, and that it's actually detrimental to the end result.

[alacal2]

I thoroughly enjoyed this. Surely the 'bludgeoning' and repetitiveness is the point. For many/most women, that is their world.

[reaky]

I didn’t hate it, but you could have fit all of this in a Tales From The Crypt episode in a sixth of the bloated runtime.

If we’re talking Amicus portmanteau, my god, yes, with Joan Collins as Elizabeth! I found this to be yet one more high-concept horror that didn’t know how to land. It would make a great double bill with Carpenter’s The Thing.

[colinr0380]

Didn't that Snickers ad with Joan Collins and Stephanie Beecham come close to doing that?

[willoneill]

Picked up the 4K release today and couldn't help noticing that the blu-ray disc (older technology with less definition) has a picture of Demi Moore, while the 4K disc (newer technology with higher definition) is Margaret Qualley.

[andyli]

Now that’s the next-gen upgrade.

[Never Cursed]

I try very hard not to equate a film's marketing to its form, content, or ultimate value, but god, what a vile little joke that is, perfectly reflective of the film’s innate misogyny. I don't like the Anora Criterion cover or anything, but that's downright respectful in comparison

[Peacock]

Picked up the 4K release today and couldn't help noticing that the blu-ray disc (older technology with less definition) has a picture of Demi Moore, while the 4K disc (newer technology with higher definition) is Margaret Qualley.

This is a reach.

[tenia]

It does feel like a bit of a reach to me. There's 2 main characters, one on each disc, and Demi Moore in on the BD because it's on the left tray so that's the first disc in terms of reading order, and only then you get Margaret Qualley, which is a configuration simply fitting their credits order.

[Mr Sausage]

It may not be deliberate, but it's hardly a reach to say the design is reflecting the film's themes.

[willoneill]

Picked up the 4K release today and couldn't help noticing that the blu-ray disc (older technology with less definition) has a picture of Demi Moore, while the 4K disc (newer technology with higher definition) is Margaret Qualley.

This is a reach.

What's the reach? I never stated it was intentional, I'm simply stating the factual display of the discs. Or are you arguing that blu-ray is neither older technology nor lower definition than 4K? I believe those are also facts.

[tenia]

It may not be deliberate, but it's hardly a reach to say the design is reflecting the film's themes.

It does, but I don't think it's as much of a conscious choice from the release's design as what some are suggesting it is. But it's not the first post I've seen online suggesting so, which might be what I read willoneill's post as suggesting this while it might have been a more simply descriptive observation.

[Peacock]

One disc had to be Moore, one had to be Qualley. I seriously doubt someone sat there and decided “let’s make the older format the older woman and the newer format the younger woman”. It’s possible that someone was that unaware and that ageist. But I feel like that’s a stretch to assume that it’s anything other than a coincidence. If there really was intent there you could argue they chose Qualley for the UHD because she’s a newer actress, or Moore is on the Blu because she’s a more popular and famous actor and Blu-rays are more widely accessible.

I just think assuming some kind of symbolic intent on who is on which disc is strange, especially when the way it’s been interpreted above would be incredibly demeaning and hard to justify to the disc producers.

[swo17]

Or rather, it would simply be playing into the film's themes

[willoneill]

One disc had to be Moore, one had to be Qualley.

Except that's not really true. The discs didn't HAVE to have any pictures on them at all, they could've just had the title and the format logo. Or both actresses on each. Or one could've had Demi's character Walk of Fame star, and one could've been a green vial of the substance, etc, etc, etc. So clearly someone with the film, or at Mubi, made a choice to do the discs this way.

[Peacock]

Someone made a choice to have faces on the disc. Agreed. They could have made them blank instead. But as the film is about one woman becoming the other it doesn’t feel strange that a face would be on each disc. It’s a good design idea.

My argument is that there was more likely a decision to make disc 1 one actress and disc 2 the other based on aesthetics and layout or randomness rather than an offensive symbolic reference to the disc format and (intentionally or unintentionally) the age of the actresses.

But ultimately this frivolous debate can only go round in circles. Perhaps I’m naive in hoping that a random incel isn’t coming up with packaging design for art house blu-rays…