Question #1

We’re so blessed to have the phenomenal director of the Substance, Coralie Fargeat, join us today for a conversation. Congratulations, Coralie. This is both an entertaining and a cautionary tale. What have been some of the most surprising reactions that you’ve heard to the film, Coralie?

Coralie Fargeat:

I think to me, even if I wish it would happen, where people, especially women who usually are not into genre or horror films, who told me, Oh, my God, that’s not usually the type of movie I’m watching, and I totally loved it, and I felt seen. I’m receiving many text about women saying, It changed my life. I’m more gentle toward myself now. Just yesterday, I read a comment like, Coralie, you have given us a revolution. That was to me the best message I can definitely receive from the audience.

Question #2

How do you think that your film enhances the aesthetic frontiers of body horror?

Coralie Fargeat:

Basically, to me, my language in filmmaking is not with words, but it’s through visual and through sound. Building visceral experience for the audience using cinematography together with sound design and what you’re going to see on screen with prosthetic was really the core of that film. I think I love challenges, and I love to create scenes that you’ve not seen before and try to make them To me, for instance, the birth sequence when Sue is born from Elizabeth, it’s the first scene that I wrote. Even before I wrote the script, I didn’t know who my character would be. It’s the first one that really came to my mind. I think it has all the core DNA of the movie with being something that is going to be a true visceral experience with no words, making you feel what the character are are going to feel. Basically, every transformation that they experience and the way they look at themselves as well, to me, is embodied in that sequence. I think it’s really the association of the three elements, like the visuals with the location that reflects what the characters have in their mind, the madness that go more and more and that gives frames that are crazier and crazier, together with the with it truly at the core of the film. And of course, the flesh that I’m going to film in very macro shots as well.

Question #3

You touched on the prosthetics a little bit in what you were just saying. What specific challenges did the film’s practical effects pose? What prosthetics and makeup effects were the hardest to achieve and/or hardest to figure out on set?

Coralie Fargeat:

Oh, Oh, my God. So many. All of that, I would say. Basically, I think when you start making a film, the strong choices that you make about how you’re going to make your movie is what’s going to be the core of your film. I knew in my guts that for this film, which is about women’s bodies and flesh and bone, I wanted to see everything for real as much as possible. But obviously, the number of prosthetics that are used in the movie is huge. The biggest challenge were, how are we going to do that? That’s what led us to have an extremely long shoot. We shot more than 100 days, to be able to cope with this crazy amount of prosthetics that is weighing heavily on the shooting day. We had this very unique shooting organization where we kept… Once we had done the shooting with the actresses, we shot an extra 15 days in what we called the lab, which was a very reduced unit me and five people to shoot all the prosthetic work, all the close-ups, all the things which are the core of the filmmaking but need very few people. We were in that little space, five with all those crazy amounts of body pieces on the floor, just a little bit piece of set decoration, and we were filming the most important scene of the movie.

To me, I think that’s a very strong element that is at the core of the film, that you can feel it’s really a crew that enjoyed so much giving life to those elements. They cared so much about finding the right balance that I needed for the transformation process, which is not just about aging, but about deforming, a real metamorphosis. Basically, for each transformation of the character, we had maybe 10 different techniques, depending on the shots that I was going to do. Everyone, I think, were feeling, even if it was hard to get to do this, that it was the little kids playing with giving life to stuff that made us dream when we were younger. To me, that’s also what gives something, I think, truly special for those prosthetic words. You feel the love of the crew who did them, basically.

Question #4

I mean, they’re absolutely incredible in the film. You touched a little bit on the screenplay, and you said the first scene that you wrote was the birth of Sue, which is, I think, going to become one of our iconic body horror scenes in Cinematic history. I’m predicting it now. Awarded best screenplay in Cannes. Congratulations on that achievement. It’s pretty incredible. Did you write the screenplay with any of these actors in mind or with their casting process to find the ideal actresses?.

Coralie Fargeat:

Yeah. So when I write my script, I usually have an image in my mind because I’m a very visual person, and I write what I see and what I want to film in the end. So there is always an image and some idea that guides me. But there is your mind, and then there is a reality where your movie is going to become real at a certain point with a certain real world. Most of the time is not the idea you had to start with that’s going to happen. Here, I knew, to be honest, that the casting process was going to be the toughest challenge of the film because basically, I wanted an actress who would be iconic, who would symbolize what the movie is about. I knew that it would mean basically confronting an actress to her worst phobia. I knew that I was going to go through a lot of nos and people who wouldn’t be ready, and I totally understand, to do that. That’s what happened. I had some rejections, some actresses turned part down. At some point, we were researching ideas, and I was discussing with my producers, and the name of Demi arrived in the conversation. I said, Oh, yeah, it’s a great idea, but please, let’s not lose time with that because I think she will never want to do this. I truly believe that she wouldn’t be ready to play with her image the way the movie needed. I said, We have nothing to lose. Let’s send the script, but let’s not wait for too long. She immediately responded in a very, very strong way to the script. From then, we met, we discussed a lot about the specificities of the movie because I really wanted her to know exactly what she would step in. Everything we talked about, the 100-day shootings, shooting in France with heavy prosthetic, with not a huge Hollywood machine behind us that she was probably used to in the movie she’s done in the past. Also, the level of nudity that the movie request because it’s a real way to tell what the movie is about, and each shot has a meaning. It was important for me that she understood and felt at ease with that because it was crystal clear on the script that the movie was a vision. It was really something something super specific that I had in my mind that I needed to express in a certain way.

It was important to feel that Domi would be ready to really team with me to create this story and this vision. When we discussed more, I also read her book, her autobiography, and I discovered something very different of the image I had of her. Someone who really meant herself on her own, who took many risks in her life, who never go for the concentral choices. I discovered someone who really rocks, someone who’s really rock and roll. I said, Okay, she does have the level of mindset and risk-taking that the movie is needing. I think that’s what started this great collaboration, that all the cards were on the tables, and it was it’s clear that this movie was going to be unconventional, and it would be a risk-taking project, basically.

Question #5

I think the risk paid off, Coralie. It is such a singular vision, I mean, the world that you’ve created is so specifically you and yours. Again, with the super earth and the production design, I think it’s going to be something that is going to live on. But I’m curious, were there any past films that you wanted to pay homage to?

Coralie Fargeat:

Oh, there were many, I must say. When I write, I really love to welcome the way it comes because I know it comes for a reason. I don’t necessarily analyze it when I write, but I usually rationalize all this a bit later on. I think many of the movies that you can see some blink to or homage or related inspiration are movies that were truly important for me in the way I built my filmmaking As I was saying, I don’t write my scripts with word. I write my scripts with visual language, with rhythm, with something crazy that escalate little by little. I think all the movies that I grew up with and I strongly reacted to were the movies who were taking me into this journey where I could feel very, very strong emotion entering the imagination and the creativity of someone who was letting me see in his inside some way. I think all those things truly build the way I build my eye and my vision. I think everything you see, everything you watch has an influence on you and builds you in a way. We all redigest what’s around and make it ourselves with what we had of unique inside of ourselves.

But specific movies, for sure, like The Fly or Requiem for a Dream or The Thing from Carpenter, Scanners, all those has had such a strong influence impact on the young girl I was who was really seeing those amazing things happening that I couldn’t live in my everyday life. I’m so happy now to take them out of my guts and put them on the table for other people.

Question #6

I see some Carrie in there, too, maybe?

Coralie Fargeat:

Yes, definitely. The blood thing, it’s impossible not to think about Carrie when blood is used somehow.

Question #7

So That’s so great to hear about some of your cinematic inspirations for the film. What other visual inspirations did you take into the film, not just outside of the film world?

Coralie Fargeat:

Yeah. So many inspirations. Basically, when I start to write and research new idea for a film, I really start with researching visuals, whether it is painting, photography, colors that give me the biggest symbols and the essence of what the film is going to be. Here, I had done a very specific mood board lookbook with my strong inspirations that I was writing the script and I watched it again. I looked at it again very recently, and you can really see the film, the DNA that the guts of the film are already in there. They were a lot of hyper-realistic paintings with this hyper-high-ton reality with all those super sexualized bodies that you’re seeing are real photographies, but in fact, are paintings. It’s already displaying some the way reality is cheated, to make things look perfect. But in fact, they’re just an illusion. They’re just like a recreation of something. There were also a lot of bodywork artists who worked around how the flesh can be distorted, how the flesh can be melted, how the flesh can be twisted. There was also a lot of research that I did about that, that inspired me. What else can I think about?

Yes, and then it was very striking image of, I think, the most important element of the film, which are the perspective, the corridors, the endless corridor, which represents how your life can be impacted by everything that is around, and that put you in some track that you can’t escape. I had also a painting. I’m sorry, I don’t remember who did it, and it’s very famous. I think it’s a God eating the heads of a human. About the flesh, the violence of the flesh, and also some bacon work, paintings, and food. A lot of food pictures as well, which have very artistic elements in them in the way they were shot in close-up. I think most of it were also a lot of things that are word about framings, like having this in tighter and tighter stuff to really represent the obsessiveness of the film, I think, which is at the core of everything. You look at yourself every detail, you focus more and more, and that gives you the obsession that is basically leading the character to destroy themselves.

Question #8

Yeah. I mean, it’s this obsession with youth overall, right? Do you think that Hollywood still has embraced a culture of forever youth, if you will?

Coralie Fargeat:

I mean, the whole world still embrace that culture. I mean, it’s everywhere around us. And for me, like deciding to portray that story in Hollywood was a way to take the symbol of Hollywood to tell everything that is going everywhere. That’s why also I wanted to have a Hollywood that would be not realistic, but that would be the one of our unconscious collective mind, because everyone who Even those who haven’t been there, they have an image of what it is because it’s the dream that has been built about if you’re young and beautiful and sexy and smiling, you will be happy, people will look at you, you will be loved, and you will be successful. I think it’s a dream that we all have in our heads somewhere. That’s what I was interested in choosing that specific symbolical location to tell the story. To me, it’s not really about Hollywood. It’s the whole world that has been built on a certain pattern that has shaped women through the lens of basically men who were looking at them and were telling, This we like, this we don’t like, this we think is sexy, this we think is worseful.

I think it had still a very high impact about how we see ourselves and what the expectations are. When it’s a systemic thing, it’s so hard to get out of this. Even if you know that you shouldn’t be influenced by that or you shouldn’t be worrying about that, you still are because on an individual level, you can’t fight everything that is around and that permit your brain every minute when you’re outside.

Question #9

But maybe you can a film that can change the way people think about this.

Coralie Fargeat

Exactly. Thank you so much for saying this, because that’s really why I wrote the film in the first place.

Question #10

But I think you’re right. I don’t think that this problem is unique to Hollywood. I think it’s in all aspects of our culture. The substance itself, it uses an aesthetic approach that is related to horror genre in a way, and there’s a lot of bodies, gore, almost in a way. Did you use this choice as the best way to challenge society and to see how women are treated? Was that a conscious choice?

Coralie Fargeat:

Oh, yeah. I mean, There is this sentence that I wrote in an article that I love so much, which was saying, Being a woman is body horror. And I think it’s so true. To me, I really wanted to express for real what the relationship with our bodies is, how our body is something that is not neutral in the public space and that totally defines the whole way we interact with the world and how we constantly have to worry about it, how we constantly have to deal with the gazes, how our bodies are chopped by the people who look at us. To me, that’s also, I think, why this very first scene of the burst is the first one that came to my mind, because it’s someone looking at herself for real, her body, the reality of her body, and seeing something different than what is in the mirror. In the mirror, it’s a normal person, and basically, she sees a monster. She sees someone that she doesn’t. She sees someone that everyone made her feel was not good enough, was not interesting anymore. I think everything that is projected on our body is like shape in such a strong way all the representations that are around.

This is, to me, the true violence. This is the hardest violence because it’s a violence that we have within ourselves and that it’s It’s so hard, that I was saying, to free ourselves from this. To me, the idea to use the symbolical violence with body horror and all the blood and all the distortion of the flesh was a very accurate way to portray for real the violence that I feel inside and felt all my life regarding all those issues. It was a way for me, Okay, look at that. This is how I feel. This is how the crazy stuff that are still happening. This is how you make us feel basically on an everyday life with the way we look. To me, it was important to use the excess language to go very far, to be excessive, not excessive, to be at the level of what I feel regarding those issues, which to me are massive and still almost taboo and not talked about enough in our world.

Question #11

I mean, you’ve certainly pushed the envelope and have led us all to discuss this in much more detail. And the movie has become such a success. I mean, it’s an Internet sensation. Audiences are going to see it in theaters all around the world. Coralie, you’ve created such a phenomenal film. It’s now a pop culture phenomenon. Was there a moment during filming where you knew that you had created something special?

Coralie Fargeat:

Yeah. To be honest, when I decided to write that film, it was something that was so important to me and that instinctively it, it relatively resonated so much with how I feel as a human being in the world regarding those matters that I knew. It may be stupid to say that, but it’s I knew that if I succeeded to give life to this movie, which was going to be so hard and so challenging, I knew it could be something important because I was doing it with such a sincerity of my experience, but also my analysis of the world regarding those issues. What I was saying, it’s something that is everywhere, but that we don’t talk about. To me, being able to bring that with my tools, which is filmmaking, with my 100% sincere vision and willing to let it go, I knew if that energy managed to go through to reach the audience, I felt that something could happen. But then it’s not in your hands. You can just do the best that you can. Then it’s the audience who decides if it’s the moment to take it. I was so happy when I saw that the audience was embracing the movie and that the seams were really routing and take the time to infuse.

It’s not something that’s what I feel that, okay, it’s going to have two weeks attention and then people forget. It’s something that takes time to digest, to analyze, to think about, to create conversations, and to slowly create those roots that we need to spark all those conversations and address them for real. But all this takes time. I’m so happy to see that the elements start to leave outside of the movie, like with people recreating stuff and doing memes, because then it becomes something that’s going to stay with people even once the movie will be a few years from then.

Question #12

Yeah, a lot of people are going to be celebrating Halloween this weekend. So I’m envisioning a lot of Monstru Elysasoo. I’m imagining Yellow Coats. We’re going to see it all in the streets at Halloween parties this weekend.

Coralie Fargeat:

One last addition. Yeah, sorry.

Question #13

No, no, go ahead, please. I didn’t mean to interrupt you.

Coralie Fargeat:

No, that was The craziest thing I saw on Twitter is a friend of mine who was at the New York

City for a dog Halloween parade, and someone has dressed their dogs, one with the Monstru Elysasoo, like the paper mask and the blue skirt, and one dog was the Sioux with pink stuff. The two owners were dressed as Harvey and Elizabeth. It was totally insane. The dogs had a little note saying, We are one. That’s amazing. It was like, it’s so funny. I think, to me, that’s where the power of symbol goes through and make people able to make it their own.

Question #14

One last question for you, Coralie, before we let you go. Do you see the sign of the success of the substance as being a sign that people are craving different and creative storytelling in theaters again?.

Coralie Fargeat:

Yes. No, for real. Another thing that made me so happy when I received some message, it was like, yes, thank for creating a new story, a unique story that we haven’t seen yet. Even if I think there is no new story, we always recreate things that have been told differently. But I think for me, what was important in that movie, it was to do it my way, to do it with allowing to feel that what I had to tell was worth being told. Because sometimes, a lot of times, you say, Oh, no, who is going to be interested? Or should I say that? Is it really worth for me doing that? For me, I think this movie was a great step of telling, Okay, who I am as a person, as a woman with my soul, is worth communicating to the world. To me, that was a huge step that I think I allowed myself to do with that movie, is to feel that who I am is worse being watched and shared and hopefully loved. But I at least not censorship myself. To me, feeling that the theatrical experience, it was to me the core of the creation of the movie, for people to go in theaters, having the collective experience, sharing with the audience everything that was going to happen, sound-wise, visual-wise, and for them to have a ride.

I think that’s what made me love cinema so much and made me want to do that. Hearing people being happy to see new way of making films, new way of telling stories, because I did everything not following the rules. I did them following the rules I created for the movie. I was so happy to see that people are going for the ride because I think that’s what we need also, new representations, new imaginations, new creativity to refresh our collective mind, the one we were talking about.

Question #15

Well, what a vision. What a directorial achievement. Congratulations on all the success of the movie and for giving us this gift, having to see the world differently. Thank you for joining us today.

Coralie Fargeat:

Thank you so much, really. Thank you so much.