And turned Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley into one of the years best movie monsters.
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This article was published on October 7, 2024.
Spoilers for the end ofThe Substancefollow.
But each time Sue overstays her welcome, parts of Elisabeths body age at punishing rates.
Over two years, Fargeat worked to construct a beastly mash-up befitting the bloodbath of the films operatic finale.
Its the way society has shaped itself by the way men look at women.
This is how Elisasue came to life.
1.The Birth
1.
Elisasue is the product of minds and bodies stalked by external valuations.
Like many great movie monsters, Elisasue wants only to be loved.
Hes monstrous, but you want to hug him, Fargeat says, and the same applies to Elisasue.
In her eyes, Elisasue is toThe Substancewhat Quasimodo is to Victor HugosThe Hunchback of Notre-Dame.
I wanted her to struggle and limp.
2.The Transformation
2.
He and Fargeat then created the full-size Elisasue using a mix of prosthetics, puppetry, and digital renderings.
The work was so meticulous that Persin jokingly calls it months of suffering.
Qualley spent six claustrophobic hours in the makeup chair to become Elisasue.
The actress found the characters complexities rewarding after so much time embodying Sues soullessness.
But the physical demands were a different story.
That was painful, Qualley says.
But we got through it.
3.The Blowup
3.
So she abuses the Substance once again, leading to the surprise emergence of a third self.
When Elisasue glimpses her repulsive reflection in the mirror, she feels a sense of victory.
In Fargeats eyes, she can no longer see herself through any prescribed beauty standard.
Only then does she find peace.
Moore and Fargeat think of Elisasue as a tender response to Elisabeths self-loathing.
She represents a reckoning and the release of the physical body, Moore says.
At the New Years event, Elisasues body mutates in real time.
Fargeat, with a camera attached to her helmet, operated the fire hose herself.
They had only one chance to capture a wide shot of the audience being splattered.
The audience, for me, represents society.
I depicted Elisabeths genuine dream, which is to be loved by those people for who she really is.
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