We miss the way things used to be, or we long for something that never was. But the body doesn’t care or comply. It gets creaky and decays, eventually becoming tasty sustenance for worms. It’s a natural process. It is also, frankly, pretty disgusting, perhaps even more so when the person inside said body decides to meddle with the forces of nature and do something drastic.
This is where body horror comes in to turn our fear of mortality, or perhaps just ennui, into something, well, horrific. Something gooey and viscous and crunchy. The heroines and heroes of such movies as “The Substance” and “A Different Man” look to medical science to make substantial changes, the kind that reshape identity beyond mere aesthetics. The results can be gross but also captivating.
“The Substance,” Coralie Fargeat’s Cannes breakout that brings a career-best performance from Demi Moore, leans harder into the “horror” part of body horror than “A Different Man,” which says quite a bit given that the latter film shows us a man’s face gradually peeling off. That man is Edward (a heavily made-up Sebastian Stan), a struggling actor with a disfiguring facial condition called neurofibromatosis. Edward pines for his playwright neighbor, Ingrid (Renate Reinsve), who likes him well enough, but he lacks the confidence to let her know how he feels.
Then Edward undergoes an experimental procedure that turns him into a conventionally handsome guy who looks like Stan (after his face has peeled away in goopy globs). Success! Except it isn’t. When Ingrid writes a play about her friendship with the old Edward, who she thinks has died, the new Edward lands the part with the help of a mask made from a surgical mold of his old face. Enter Oswald (Adam Pearson, who really does have neurofibromatosis), who looks like the old Edward — but is also charming, funny, confident and a bit of a ladies’ man, where Edward was downcast, a prisoner of his appearance. Ingrid is smitten. So is seemingly everyone else — except Edward, left to stare into the middle distance and wonder what the hell is going on.
“A Different Man” is essentially a parable of authenticity, and the value of being comfortable in one’s own skin — like Oswald. Despite looks that will never land him a modeling gig, he carries himself like a man who enjoys life to the fullest, as Edward, with his new, movie-star face, falls into morose self-pity, uncertain of who or what he is. More central than the gross-out factor is a wry statement of disability pride, a reminder that swagger needn’t be skin-deep.
The twist of Edward’s fate — taking desperate medical measures in vying for “normalcy,” success and romance, only to meet unexpected results — is actually reminiscent of one of the oldest body-horror movies, Tod Browning’s “The Unknown” (1927). Lon Chaney plays a huckster circus performer who pretends to have no arms. He’s in love with the ringmaster’s daughter (Joan Crawford), who claims she doesn’t like to be touched. So, naturally, he gets his allegedly nonexistent arms amputated — only to return and find out she has fallen for a guy who has arms. Best laid plans and all that.
Yes, body horror has been with us since the silent era. But very little, even in the corpus of such masters as David Cronenberg and David Lynch, shows the commitment to grotesquerie that defines “The Substance.” The movie makes even the most mundane moments feel vile, as when a noxious TV executive (Dennis Quaid) wolfs down shrimp, and we hear every sloppy chomp in excruciating detail. But that’s merely an appetizer in a movie that takes the primary age-and-beauty theme of “Death Becomes Her” (currently enjoying a second life as a Broadway musical) and literally blows it up in our faces.
Moore is Elisabeth Sparkle, an actor-turned-workout show host pushed into retirement by an industry that tosses women aside when they no longer meet superficial standards of hotness. Angry and desperate, she tries the Substance, a back-alley medical regimen that makes a younger version of Elisabeth, named Sue (Margaret Qualley), emerge, “Alien”-like, from Elisabeth’s spine. The procedure calls for Elisabeth and Sue to split time walking the Earth, one week on, one week off. But Elisabeth and Sue don’t really get along. Sue, ensconced in a hit, sexed-up version of Elisabeth’s old workout gig, doesn’t want to go dormant. Elisabeth, resentful, gorges on whatever fatty food she can find.
This will not end well. Unless, of course, you love body horror. Fargeat, possessed of a strong, purposeful filmmaking voice, pushes all possibilities to their extremes, culminating in an extended sequence that leaves you wondering if you should laugh, cry or vomit. Here the closest analogy might be John Carpenter’s “The Thing,” with its visual effects that deftly glop together entities and identities and ask us to consider the idea at the heart of so much body horror: authenticity. This is what both Edward and Elisabeth defy in their impulse to mess with Mother Nature, ultimately paying different kinds of prices.
“I grow old … I grow old,” laments the contemplative hero of T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” “I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.” The march toward the grave is rarely pretty. Body horror suggests that, nonetheless, we might be smart to just let the process play out — even if that doesn’t offer the same cinematic jolt as the alternative.
