Substantial

I haven't written very much about one of my favorite movies of the year, Coralie Fargeat's The Substance, but while riding home on the train today, I thought it was high time I should. 

At least extratextually, like in terms of the kind of phenomenon it is, if not so much about the movie itself.

(If you want to find my glowing review, go here.)

My train ride takes me past my favorite local cinema, The Sun in Yarraville, as the back wall of the building faces out directly on the train tracks, with only a parking lot in between. They use this back wall, smartly, to advertise to people on the train. 

But they don't just put up any old posters of any old movies that are playing there. For a long time, they had a large, horizontal advertisement up for The Hateful Eight -- like, years after its release -- because they would periodically still show it, due to retrofitting one of the auditoriums with a 70mm projector in order to play the film properly. In fact, they did such a good job that Quentin Tarantino, Kurt Russell and Samuel L. Jackson all showed up there for a screening early on in the film's run, to take questions from the audience. I know some people who went to that, and in fact, some people who were going to go but didn't -- no one knew these three would be there until they got there -- and are still kicking themselves today for that choice. Heck, I think they might still show The Hateful Eight occasionally today. 

But when it's not something like that, usually it's something like the 72-hour James Bond marathon they had, at which I saw the final three Bond movies I needed to see to become a completist, just about exactly a year ago. 

Right now, the poster for The Substance is occupying its fair share of the available real estate, suggesting it is also a phenomenon in its own right, something they are proud to trumpet to the world.

This is significant because The Substance has been out for more than two months now. That's almost unheard of these days, even in Australia.

I say "even in Australia" because what I noticed when I first got here was that Cinema Nova in particular -- that was my local cinema where I used to live, and still a preferred cinema before they stopped accepting my critics' card -- would still be playing movies that came out four or even six months ago. But that was before the streaming revolution. That was before the shortened windows between theatrical and home release, which sometimes nowadays are as short as no time at all. As those two trends gathered steam, the release windows for all movies started to conform more to the standard thing you see in the U.S., where a movie is gone inside three weeks unless it's a real hit. And if it's a real hit, maybe it'll last five weeks.

The Substance shouldn't seem like it has any chance to be a real hit. It's an extreme body horror with a brand of satire that not everyone gets or appreciates. To stay in cinemas for two months, it should have to hit all the quadrants, as they say in Hollywood, and also be really acclaimed. 

The Substance has the acclaim part, despite some notable detractors. But that subject matter? Yeesh. It's a challenge. Could it be that Demi Moore is just that much of a draw? Do we miss her that much?

I don't think two months is the cap on this movie's run here, either. Yes the Sun only has a single 8:30 showing tomorrow night, which is Thursday -- which means it has survived another new release day and guaranteed itself at least one more week. But really, it's a hard R, so the afternoon showings are probably not super packed anyway. 

But the Sun is not the only place still showing it, not by a long stretch. Both Cinema Kino (the one downstairs from my old office) and the aforementioned Cinema Nova are still showing it. Kino has only one one additional show beyond the evening show, that at 3:50 in the afternoon, but Nova has it programmed five times a day -- impressive considering that the movie is two hours and 20 minutes long. Heck, the first show is at 10:25 a.m. just to get them all in.

As a reminder, this opened on September 19th. 

I can't explain its enduring popularity with what has to be a wide swath of the viewing public, but I'm glad for it. It means that when it ends the year very high on my chart, I won't be getting all the raised eyebrows people gave me when I elevated a horror movie they'd barely heard of, Skinamarink, all the way to my #1 spot last year.

Similarly, every time I hear a critic talk about how The Substance might actually be anti-feminist, given that it has these extended leering shots of Margaret Qualley in particular, and I start to feel the guilt of the male gaze, I am reminded a) that this is a female director, and b) that for crying out loud, this movie is still worth programming, in a business that is more reliant of its bottom line than it ever has been, an entire 69 days after its release. (Huh huh, huh huh.) It must be doing something right. 

Something about this wild and woolly shot of cinematic adrenaline, gross imagery and excoriating commentary about beauty standards and Hollywood has resonated with people. And I don't need to question it any more than that.