Even body horror fans will likely be shocked by the amount of blood in French director Fargeat’s “The Substance” — though slightly less so if they saw her ultraviolent 2017 debut, “Revenge,” in which a woman is impaled upon a sharp tree branch after being shoved off a cliff.
In America, many directors get their start directing low-budget action in horror. “In France, genre film is not at all something that we do, so I was really looked at as an alien,” Fargeat says. “It was very tough. When everybody says no to you, you really feel like a freak or a monster.”
The gory finale of “The Substance” combines that discomfort with a critique of the expectations society puts on women: “In real life, we’re asked to be normal, rational, delicate, structured and gentle most of the time, and I love to do the exact opposite in my movies,” Fargeat explains. “To me, that’s where something operatic can happen. The idea is to make the audience feel some sort of catharsis or liberation, because you go through something that you’re not able to experience in real life.”
Seeing cinema as escapism from a young age, Fargeat decided she wanted to direct as a teenager. During her final year of university, she talked her way into an internship on the film “Passion of Mind” with Demi Moore (whom she’d later cast in “The Substance”).
“When you’re a PA or an intern, you’re like the little mouse who can watch everything while it’s being done: the prep, the conflicts between the crew, the unexpected problems. So for me, that was really the best school to discover everything about making movies,” she says.
After making several shorts (including 2003 award winner “Le Télégramme”) and TV series, Fargeat teamed up with a like-minded group of genre directors called “La Squadra,” who supported one another.
Going forward, she wants to try her hand at action, sci-fi, horror, even kung-fu — “everything that is not grounded in reality.” Validated by Cannes and the critical reception for “The Substance,” Fargeat says, “I now feel so confident about what I like and the way I want to do it.” — Peter Debruge
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Influences: “I grew up being a massive fan of ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Indiana Jones,’” she says. “Later, I discovered the darker world of David Lynch and David Cronenberg’s cinema.”