The blood soaked cinema of Coralie Fargeat

Reality+ (2014, Short film 22 min)
Revenge (2017)
The Substance (2024)

Analyzing a director’s style just via 3 films can feel dicey especially if one of those 3 films is a short film as sometimes directors need a few films to find their voice. However, in the case of Coralie Fargeat her stylistic voice booms loud and clear from just this small sample set. Her newest film The Substance clearly builds on visual and thematic elements she had in her 2014 short film Reality+ and her previous feature Revenge. In fact, if one only sees the final few minutes of The Substance after seeing Revenge, it would be clear that this was a Coralie Fargeat feature. Her signature is there for all to see.

A better version of yourself but for a limited time

The core question at the center of The Substance is “Have you ever Dreamt of a better of yourself?”.

Fargeat first explored this idea in Reality+ where characters can overlay their physical appearance with a desired Avatar of their choosing after they undergo a procedure. There is a time-limit to their physical appearance (12 hours) after they which they return to their regular self and they cannot transform into their Avatar again until a certain waiting period has lapsed. The Substance also has a time limit for the new and improved version of oneself but it is for alternating 7 day intervals. Meaning, the self and other-self live their lives in alternating weeks.

Other than the time-limit, there is another difference between how Reality+ and The Substance approach the self vs other-self. In Reality+, the new-self is only a physical appearance superimposed on the original self so in essence both are the same shared mind, conscious. Whereas, the body separation in The Substance creates two physical entities that become two competing egos/personalities sharing the same core fluids. This difference leads to the tug of war in The Substance where the balance is disrupted.

There will be Blood, lots of it

Revenge is a blood soaked film where Jen’s character (Matilda Lutz) seeks vengeance for her rape and attempted killing. At the start of the film, Jen and Richard (Kevin Janssens) fly to a harsh desert landscape where Richard is planning a hunting trip with his buddies Stan (Vincent Colombe) and Dimitri (Guillaume Bouchède). Before his buddies arrive, Richard is using the time for a romantic getaway with Jen leaving his wife and family back at home. When Richard goes away for a few hours to arrange paperwork for the hunting trip, Stan rapes Jen. Richard tries to play this violent act down but Jen wants to leave for home immediately. Richard tries to reassure her but instead attempts to kill Jen and thinks he has succeeded. As the saying goes “what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger”. Jen survives, grows in strength and goes on a bloody violent hunt to eliminate the 3 men.

Despite the oodles of blood sprayed across the screen, Revenge has a music video visual aesthetic where yellow and red palettes pop with a techno track. At times, the interior shots of the film feels like a N.W Refn film taking place in bright daylight while the exterior desert shots echo Mad Max. However, it is clear that Fargeat has her own unique sensibilities as the camera hones in on tiny details and expands them with close-ups or extended sequences where scenes that would normally be depicted in seconds unfold over minutes. The film is more style than substance (pun not intended).

The Substance starts off as a sci-fi body horror film but it ends up united with Revenge in soaking the screen with blood. The slight difference is timing of the blood. In The Substance, blood spurts wildly on the screen only in the final third whereas blood starts flowing liberally in Revenge near the halfway point of the film. In terms of quantity, the sheer non-stop gushing of blood in The Substance more than overtakes the total blood oozed in Revenge.

Mirror Mirror on the Wall

The concept of beauty is prominent in all 3 films and all 3 films feature characters who embody aspects of beauty and are obsessed about with their appearance. Their obsession is emphasized by the usage of mirrors, which are featured prominently in Reality+ and The Substance where the main characters spend plenty of screen time admiring / detesting their physical appearances. In Revenge, the main character Jen doesn’t need to stand in front of a mirror as she is constantly stared at by the three men. The house/villa in the film has plenty of glass windows which give the men plenty of ways to ogle her.

Small World in a Large landscape

Reality+ is set in Paris, The Substance in Los Angeles while Revenge is shot in Morocco but the desert landscape isn’t ever named in the film and could be multiple locations around the world (Mexico is indirectly implied by the beer). Despite the vast landscape of all 3 films, Fargeat's characters go back-forth in between a few locations only. This creates a mini-world for the characters where their entire universe consists of a closed loop allowing them to visit a few familiar spots and coming across only a few people. As a result, the films are stripped of any plot fat and don’t have any unnecessary characters, dialogues or scenarios. However, the thin plot doesn’t translate into a lean running time for the two feature films.

Instead, Revenge (1 hour 48 min) and The Substance (2 hour 21 min) fill their time with eye-popping visual details amped up by loud music and often repeat the same details over and over despite the point being hammered home much earlier. Reality+ is the best of the three films and gets its point across in 22 minutes. The Substance has a wicked trailer but loses steam after repeated sequences before its jaw-dropping squirming final third.

Style over Substance

Reality+ has more substance than style but the opposite is true of the two feature films Revenge and The Substance where the visual style, aesthetic look, mood take precedent over any plot or general themes. There are clear ideas that Coralie Fargeat wants to convey and she is comfortable blending multiple genres to achieve that. Both feature films played at TIFF’s Midnight Madness section (Revenge had its World Premiere in this category at TIFF) which is where one would expect these films although in the case of The Substance, the film managed to get a Cannes Competition slot. That Cannes slot feels in keeping with the film’s core element where the other-self tries to create a life of her own away from original self, so the film tried to carve a life of its own away from a Midnight slot by escaping into the main Competition slot.