If she had listened to her haters,The Substancewouldnt exist.
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Shes completely uninterested in any of the stars on the sidewalk until we get to Jeff Goldblum.
I love him, she says, stopping to take a picture.
Out of her spine emerges Sue (Margaret Qualley) in all of her beauty and cruelty.
With the birth of Sue comes a set of rules: The pair must switch places every seven days.
Drawing too much from one side of the ledger results in irrevocable debt.
The success ofThe Substancehas been an unlikely one weathering COVID and squeamish executives.
After her first featureRevengein 2017, Fargeat turned down offers to work on other projects.
They were at an impasse.
If you fail with a movie that you didnt want to make, she says.
There is no center of the city.
And I came and I just loved it.
There is this weather.
I was hit by the energy, by the fact that cinema is everywhere.
I write with symbols.
Of course, you always wish youre going to win.
Because I feel like women dont get to be ambitious.
They dont get to want to be at the top.
I want that, because thats generally who I am.
But you have to push people around you to come with you.
When you say campaigns, its like political campaigns, its about power, money, domination.
The people youre going to bet on and invest money in?
Its a very male-dominated space in an unconscious way.
You pushed for it?Yeah, because naturallythe trend is not this one.
Its a whole unconscious system that needs to be shifted.
I need a few weeks of rest.
These awards campaigns can be very unsettling.
Because basically, youre not working.
Youre investing your energy in getting something you dont even know youre going to get.
Im curious about the person who made this film.
There is such a visceral relationship with the body that comes through.
Where did your interest in the body begin?From a very young age.
I was fascinated by that.
I had curly hair.
I wished I could be the pretty girl, but I was more of a tomboy.
It really drove me crazy because all I wanted was to be free.
Its the same in cinema.
They still could do other movies.
I was doing amateur short films with the family camera I did a remake ofStar Warswith my friends.
I had all the little toys and I animated them image by image.
It was the best time of my life.
I was rather shy but when I was directing I was another person.
I wanted to go to the French cinema school La Femis, which is the biggest one.
To be able to apply, you first have to complete two years of general studies at a university.
I did political science at Sciences Po.
I want to be in the field, in the middle of stuff.
It was directed by a Belgian director, Alain Berliner, and it starred Demi Moore.
Thats where I discovered the whole life of a film.
I was a little mouse able to see everything.
That was the best school I could do.
Do you remember Demi?It was my first experience.
Of course, I remember everything so precisely.
What was she like then versus now?Very different and very similar at the time.
She was at the top of her career at that moment.
She was that legend.
It was so impressive to see her in France.
Bruce Willis was coming to visit her on set.
To use their star image.Yes, to have this symbolic power they represent in the story.
I didnt want to be shy about trying my luck and thinking big.
We started to send the script with the first ideas I had in mind.
How old were the actors you were sending it to?Around 50.
It was a scary part.
So for maybe five or six months, it was just nos, one after another.
For the financier, it was the same.
So we kept going.
I work on only one project at the time.
I invest so much risk in it.
I had written for a year and a half on spec.
I had said no to every other offer.
Not being able to switch to something else is super scary, but it also gives me extra energy.
Itneedsto be done.At first, I honestly thought that Moore would never go for something like this.
I thought she was so in control of her image.
But I said, We have nothing to lose.
I met her and discovered a new facet of her that I didnt know at all.
Did you talk about that?She gave me her book to read.
And indeed, it made me see her through a different lens.
I discovered someone whod been very risk-taking and avant-garde.
She had the level of rock-and-roll instinct that the project would require.
All the money needed to go onscreen.
Its super important to be transparent about what the movies going to be.
Its not something you might discover on set.
At what point were you both clear and ready to go?I needed maybe five or six meetings.
So you needed to be more sure.
She was more ready.I think so, yeah.
She saw the part.
But there are things that are not going to happen the same way as other films shes worked on.
It took her out of her comfort zone.
Like what?I dont shoot in a traditional way.
I dont do a master shot, then a close up.
But when she understood that it was what was needed, she really went for it.
She needs to be grounded.
Which I totally understand.
For this film, we had so many prosthetics.
It gave me the kind of superhuman energy not to take no for an answer.
I entered war mode I was only focused on having my movie get made.
I accepted that what I love is to get up and think about films.
Now I dont care that Im not like everybody else.
Im not married; I dont have kids.
Its as simple as that.
It was a huge liberation.
InReality+the main character is a guy.
I was not ready to tell that story through a womans perspective.
It felt too intimate.
Its funny because when I was doingRevenge, I couldnt describe it as a feminist movie.
You couldnt?No.
I wasnt rationalizing that at the time.
It was something I needed to say that I was feeling, but I didnt have the words.
Its the everyday life youve been used to and you dont think about it as a structural problem.
What were the opportunities like afterRevenge?The movie really sparked something in the industry.
I received many offers to direct things and meetings with studios.
When its the first time that everyone wants to meet you, its very flattering.
So I was saying no to things.
I was seeing the trains that were passing by, and sometimes you say, Wow.
Am I making the right choice?
So I was very wary about that.
The real battle is in the edit room.
Its the final one.
you might have all the freedom you want during the shooting, prep, and writing.
Can you tell me a little bit about fighting for your edit of the film?
What did the Universal executives want to change?I think they wanted everything changed.
They didnt want to see that.
So it was a big shock.
One thing that was really not liked was the monster.
The monster is the most sincere and risky part, where I show my inner self.
You show yourself naked and people find you ugly.
But I was like, okay, so even monsters have to meet some beauty standards.
Its really an endless battle.
They rejected the monster.
In postproduction, youre fragile.
And when youre not loved, its tough.
But I could understand that they would want to change too much, even for them.
It would have to be too different to be realistically done.
Universal eventually stepped away leaving the moviewithout a distributor.
What was the situation that led you to submit the film to Cannes?We were in limbo.
We didnt know what was going to happen.
They loved my monster.
They loved my excess.
Is that what you were told a lot to do?In direct or indirect ways.
And it has an influence on my life too.
I feel more empowered because I feel less the need to pretend that Im someone Im not.
Also, I love to surprise.
I love to create things people are not going to expect.
But I can present it onscreen and say, Yes, this is this Harvey character.
Ive seen many of them, here he is in your face.
This is what its like.
Was Dennis Quaids character based on Harvey Weinstein?Yeah.
And he represents all the toxic behaviors.
People dont want to look at it.
Sometimes people say, But Harvey is a caricature.
That tells a lot.
That shrimp scene is the one that makes guys the most uncomfortable.
What scene was that inRevenge?It was the foot scene, when hessearching for the glass.
And it ended up being one of the audiences favorite scenes.
Everyone said, This scene is too long, its too excessive.
It was the same for the shrimp thing.
The power of the shrimp.
It says a lot when you portray things for what they are.
There is still some denial that its the reality.
This shot on the fly could be removed.
I still get the suggestion to remove the fly.
But a movie is not just about what is needed.
There are a lot of things that you dontneedthat make a good film.
Thats where I was thinking about David Lynch in his movies.
I love what is useless.
It builds a movie as much as what is needed for the narration.
To be chaotic, it has to be super controlled.
Its how the craziness can reach the audience.
If its too much, it doesnt work.
If its too little, it doesnt work.
The rules lead you to accept the world.
Yes, her back is going to crack open and give birth to another one.
And if this doesnt build precisely, its craziness that people cant enter.
Its an escalation and you have to go through all the steps.
Its the moment where she lets go.
Its her way of getting revenge on her other self because she doesnt care anymore.
Each bit is very precise in the level of craziness that the Lis character has to go through.
Its the moment where she finds some relief when she has almost no human shape.
Its the moment where she has, for the first time, some tenderness for herself.
Whats most important is when she says, Its me.
The audience at that moment represents society.
It gives her back so much violence.
And I think that women have kept it within themselves.
I wanted the monster to be an incarnation where all the body parts are chopped into pieces.
I wanted this to be recomposed in a Picasso way with everything at the wrong place.
That was the most difficult part.
I remember talking to the prosthetic designer and I really had to make him understand that I needed both.
It was a tricky balance to create empathy for the monster.
I saw thatyou were the one holding the hose of fake blood shooting it into the audience.
How many liters?Oh my God, it was more than 20,000 liters of fake blood.
It was a unique experience.
All the extras were so fascinated by the experience.
We want to stay and do more.
It was a very special moment.
You dont get to live that every day.
The film is very much about self-loathing.
Sue is not freedom.
Sue is a prison.
There is something seductive, too, about watching her.
Youre not shy about showing her body and her beauty.Absolutely.
Because it is great to be looked at.
It is great to feel that youre the center of the world.
Its a major thing that has allowed women to exist so far.
Women have had a place in society because they were beautiful.
Thats the main thing theyve been rewarded for.
But its because you only depend on other peoples eyes.
Everyone wants to exist, and sometimes, you are going to just do what it takes to exist.
Would you take the substance?I think I would.
Its a pact with the devil and the devil is so strong.
For me, what takes the lead now is who I am as a filmmaker.
Im less and less concerned about the rest, but its still there.
When youve been raised with such a tyranny about appearance, it stays with you forever.
That part of me is much more gentle now.
Its more under control.
But I also have no idea how Im going to feel about myself in ten years.
Its an endless journey to find this peace with yourself.
