The First Page: How "The Substance" Blends Form and Feminism

A deep dive into Coralie Fargeat’s Cannes-winning film, exploring the script’s artistic strategies and what they reveal about cinema’s current ethical turn.

Hello, everyone!

After a long time, we are back, and I have to apologize for my absence. Nothing special or bad happened to me in these three weeks I wasn’t here. I just needed some time for myself. Moments to breathe, to savor experiences, to focus on some activities, or just to do nothing.

By the way, I’m seriously thinking about changing the frequency of the Diary. Writing biweekly may be the best way to avoid a lack of consistency, which is important in our dialogical relationship. I’ll reflect more upon it and soon bring an upshot.

In any case, here we are! And, as I promised, today we’ll start The First Page, approaching the most recent and amazing work of the French director, Coralie Fargeat. We are going to talk about the Cannes Festival winner: The Substance.

Let me explain how things will work in this new column.

Before the analysis – which is directed only to a fragment of the screenplay –, I’ll always bring some remarks on the film as a whole. I don’t intend to write reviews: there are a lot of them around the web, and many are produced in a very poor way, endorsing Virginia Woolf’s position on the subject¹.

However, I don’t want to deprive myself of sharing general thoughts on a script I will be about to break down. So, this will be our first step.

After that, taking into account that many people are not used to having access to screenplays, I will share it with you. I strongly believe that the reading of screenplays as art pieces should be promoted, for they really are literary works. And the fact is that we are far from having a culture that values this kind of experience – for instance, just recently the publication of scripts is gaining popularity.

Our third step, at last, will be the analysis. Even though the project’s name is The First Page, you may expect that sometimes I will weave considerations beyond this limit. There are openings whose beginning, middle, and end don’t happen exactly on the first page. Hence, in order to don’t break the dramatic flow, we’ll exceed some pages, when necessary.

That said, let’s start. It’s time to pump it up!

Margaret Qualley, Coralie Fargeat, and Demi Moore in Cannes Film Festival, 2024.

First Thoughts

We could possibly talk about The Substance for hours. Actually, it’s brilliant seeing how many studies are being made, because the movie deserves it, absolutely. And the main reason for this, in my view, is that Fargeat’s cinema is engaged with different artist agendas.

One of them is the ethical one. More and more people praise works that present social concerns – Ainda Estou Aqui’s victory, in the Oscar, is a clear sign of it.

For a Brechtian like me, it’s wonderful witnessing art being valued as a means, maybe the best one, to social change. We build a better world only with a better culture, critical thinking, and moral knowledge.

Nevertheless, when art is kidnapped to the realm of ethics we face, as well, a great problem. And this is happening, day by day.

As I said before, it’s an overt phenomenon that the art industry is imposing ethical requirements on artists, which means that many producers are dismissing great works that don’t present ethical aspects. Today, to be engaged, worried about inequalities is cool, fashionable, and mainly: it makes money.

As a result, artists who don’t address political or ethical themes and, instead, create stories majorly interested in formal or aesthetic features, such as Maya Deren and Alfred Hitchcock, face serious problems in doing their works. No doubt, a pity.

Not rarely, what underlies this posture is the belief that whether one makes art as such or creates engaged art. Well, I almost feel stupid saying that, but guess what? It’s possible to achieve both objectives at once! Besides, an avant-garde trait of a certain work can even improve its social criticism. And it is this trivial idea that Coralie remembers us so well in The Substance.

What is the source of the movie’s power, in terms of feminist theory? The movie’s form. It’s the style employed, that is, the absurdism, the references to other directors, such as Kubrick and Lynch, and the myths incorporated into the narrative, that boost the argument against the patriarchy.

Therefore, in my perspective, one of the biggest merits of Coralie’s piece is this reminder. Do we want to change the world? Sure. Do we see in art a great way to do so? Fine. Now, we cannot forget that it’s not enough to show moral concern in art, for this doesn’t produce actions. What motivates people to act differently in the world are emotions. And there is nothing more capable of eliciting feelings, in art, than innovations in form.

The First Pages

We’ll read until the end of scene 2. Enjoy the opening!

Analysis

Very well. A brief look through the pages reveals three basic and noteworthy aspects.

First, the most visual one: Coralie’s writing has a good pace. Following the standard recommendation, her paragraphs exceed 3 lines only when there is a good narrative reason for that, as when the author wants to decelerate the action or emphasize something relevant.

Second, although objective, as it has to be, this script counts on several moments where language is used in a more complex and rich way. We’ll talk more about it soon, but it’s remarkable how Coralie style not only attends industry demands, but resorts to literary devices in the right moments, without compromising what is expected of a screenplay.

Third, The Substance’s script has a clear commitment to art itself. It is designed to promote an aesthetic experience for the reader, going beyond a simple “blueprint” for a real work, that is, the movie produced. This feature can be appreciated, for example, in her clever use of epigraph: notably a formal resource for artistic ends.

In quoting Danzel and Heraclitus right at the beginning of the text, Coralie sets her ambition: to promote a dialogue between present and past, pop culture and classics – an approximation of deep thought and everyday life. It’s beautiful, elegant, and ironic.

Moreover, the author presents, in a nutshell, the heart of her story. After all, what is the human being if not the creature that attempts to break the natural rules of the world? The reality is clearly dynamic, and instead of contemplating it, like other animals do, we fight. We determine rules, ridiculous standards that go against the flow of life.

Entering the script properly, we find, on the slugline, a curious element. What the heck an egg is doing on a “flat surface”? That is not its natural place, a fact that draws our attention immediately. After that, the strangeness grows with the appearance of the syringe needle and its fluid.

Quietly, this scene informs us that this story is not an ordinary one.

The suspense, accompanied by absurdism, is then built sentence by sentence.

Each one isolated, aiming for a stronger impact.

At the end of this beat, when the mystery is solved and we see what is going on, Coralie graces us with a literary trick: she moves away from objectivism, common in screenwriting, and inserts a voice in the text.

Coming from nowhere, a narrator shows up, commenting on what we, readers, see on our mental screen – what, of course, only highlights the scary tone of the movie.

Finishing with a perfect pause, scene 1 gives all we expect from a good opening: tension, curiosity, elegance, and pace – as I said here, explosions are not needed to engage the audience; we can do more than this, as Coralie shows.

Not just the first scene is well constructed, as it receives a good end.

Every screenwriter must understand that his job is to make the reader turn pages. So, to master the art of connection – of scenes, beats, sequences – is crucial. And here we have the classic, but useful, tool of different sounds of another context bringing movement to the film.

What seems to be the purpose of Coralie in scene 2 is to set a certain parallelism between this action and the previous one.

As scene 1, here we also notice a static, frontal shot. In the same way, we observe actions that only with the passing of time are understandable. And more: assuming the hypothesis that this correlation is true, it’s a natural step to understand that the previous egg, which suffers a duplication, is a representation of Elizabeth Sparkle.

In other words, the juxtaposition of these two phenomena creates new filmic meanings.

In comparison to the first, the second scene is clearly more comprehensible. Our protagonist is finally presented. And what is worth observing is when this happens: still on the first page.

Every experienced screenwriter has just listened to it: don’t leave the first page without presenting your hero. Although the rule may seem strong, it has some appeal: it’s at least risky to advance many pages of a film without the presence of the protagonist, or something related to him or his challenge. And again: there is not just one, boring way to do that.

On the contrary. Notice how Coralie builds, just in two and a half pages, the main character, his problem, and how she will react to it.

It’s not easy to attain this economy, much less in writing with subtlety, elegance, and creativity.

No doubt, there are opening pages infinitely stronger than these in cinema’s history. It’s reasonable to say that. However, it’s also important to value what needs to be valued.

The Substance’s merit, to a great extent, consists of looking to the past and revere the greats. In obscure times, this is much more relevant than it may seem. It’s a posture of rescue of aesthetic values, references that are constantly in danger, as well as a reminder that new art is made, in general, by knowing what was made before.

That’s all folks! Let me know in the comments if you enjoyed The First Page!

I will see you in two weeks.

In the meantime, take care of yourself!

1. See Reviewing, 1939, by Virginia Woolf.