WORDS BETTY CUTTING
At F Word, we celebrate films that challenge and provoke. In What to Watch: The Brutal, the Bold, and the Bemusing, Betty Cutting dissects three striking examples of modern storytelling. The Substance shocks with its grotesque satire on aging and gender stereotypes, The Outrun explores the raw terrain of addiction through quiet resilience, and Yorgos Lanthimos’s Kinds of Kindness defies traditional narratives, inviting viewers into a perplexing, thought-provoking experience.
These films remind us that cinema’s power lies not just in entertainment, but in sparking discomfort, questions, and reflection long after the credits roll.
THE SUBSTANCE
The Substance is strewn with visually grotesque metaphors which amplify the differences between societies' gendered standards.
All the extreme feelings society (or Hollywood and in particular women in Hollywood) harbour around aging provide a genre handbook for this film; repulsion, discomfort, self-hate, which lead into horror, gore, comedy and satire.
In one of the earliest scenes Harvey (Dennis Quaid) fires Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) for being too old, whilst sat in a restaurant devouring a bowl of prawns. He’s loud, messy, disgusting, the camera is a fisheye lens distorting close up shots of his face and the sound design is eerie and appropriately squelchy. He’s seventy years old in real live and is telling fifty year old Sparkle “Renewal is inevitable, but at fifty, it stops.” He’s habitually peacocking his male privilege one slimy shrimp at a time.
The restaurant scene maps out the ongoing theme of disregard, Harvey abandons their meal half way through, and ultimately discards Elisabeth. As audience members we are confronted with our own feelings of repulsion. We’re reminded men aren’t taught to be ‘neat’ and careful. Whilst even the most immaculate women aren’t digestible enough.
The Hollywood backdrop teamed with a big dose of irony is used to further highlight how an injustice between genders manifests. Harveys grotesqueness is outwards facing, whilst we later learn Elisabeth's is a deep internal repulsion and self-hate plagues her behind closed doors. We’re taken on a journey of sheer desperation, it’s exaggerated and it leans into that exaggeration with stylistic intent.
It’s a film of duality, what would happen if we released our internal younger self back into the world? And when does enhancement become destruction? Anti-aging is portrayed as an addiction, it affects every other aspect of her life. The Substance is visually reminiscent of The Shining and Requiem For A Dream; two movies that follow the descent into madness following addictive tendencies.
Coralie Fargeat makes a 10/10 satirical comedy that confronts us with the uncomfortable question How far would we actually go?
Some of the visceral shock and disturbance we feel is because perhaps we can imagine people doing this. The audience sits there in suspension wondering who out of their friends might consider injecting an anti ageing solution, and given the unregulated nature of injectables (but consistent popularity) within the beauty industry, injecting yourself with an anti-aging remedy feels shocking for the very confronting reason it shouldn’t be shocking - because perhaps a lot of people would reach this level of desperation.
It felt like an exaggeration of so many "tweakments" that people get - Demi Moore going back to her old self, is like an extreme version of when the botox wears off. One day you have a shiny forehead, the next you wake up with wrinkles popping back up. And the horror people feel when they see that is real.
Should we uphold and further encourage insane beauty standards? What could be worse than feeding into the ever rising patriarchal standards of unachievable perfection?
Well, ageing, of course.
THE OUTRUN
Stylistically The Outrun couldn’t be further from The Substance. Big bright pink glaring Hollywood billboards are swapped for the sweeping cliffs of the Orkney Islands. And after watching both, I’m not sure which is more brutal. Whilst stylistically polar opposite, there are a lot of thematic parallels between the two movies. Similar to The Substance, The Outrun shares a deep sense of self-loathing and loneliness.
The Outrun seeks to bridge the gaps of internal duality, whereas The Substance aims to separate.
Directed by Nora Fingscheidt this sobering account of alcoholism is about internal landscapes as much as the external. Saoirse Ronan’s performance as Rona is flawless.
The script doesn’t shy away from the grit of alcoholism. The self-hatred, the destruction, the danger of it all. Fingscheidt, however, isn’t as brave as Rona. The Outrun takes no creative risks and plays it safe with wispy narration and nature montages. Although I’m opposed to the tender visual poetry and the harsh tones of folklore I did find myself wanting more of a visual challenge akin to the characters.
And as with the life of an alcoholic, those elements are felt harshly. There’s the fog, the euphoric gusts of wind, then the waves that come crashing down.
Sometimes I found the interactions with nature predictable and cheesy - big crashing waves to show turbulent emotions, fire when passion is looming. But I enjoyed the fact It’s strewn with folklore.
(Spoiler alert) Unlike The Substance, we’re given a neatly wrapped up message. And it isn’t one of self-destruction, it’s one of self-control and a bleak hope at the end of it all.
Not similar to substance is the tender visual poetry, the harsh tones of folklore, the occasional gentle narration (that’s done so well you barely notice it).
KINDS OF KINDNESS
Kinds of Kindness is a triptych by Yorgos Lanthimos of - well what the fuck was that of?!
After I finished watching, confusion ensued. Actually no, confused ensued from the beginning. And the age old film-watching question came up; is this intentional? Is this sense of confusion metaphorical? What does this mean?
I tried to sit back and enjoy the ride. But ‘ride’ evokes the perception of an ending and I’m not sure there was one. Sure the film ended, but instead of answering any kind of deep burning question, Kinds of Kindness just raised more and more questions about life.
Friends were coming at me fast with intellectual theories because they were so confused but didn’t want to admit their confusion. They wanted to ‘get it’ and I just didn’t buy their theories. But because we all buy into Yorgos Lanthimos in general, and feel a lot of love and discomfort for his movies we wanted that same feeling of “Oh I get it.” I didn’t get it. And I still don’t. It’s not an easy narrative, it’s abstract, and it takes a lot of ‘forgetting’ how we’ve been trained to watch movies. The characters change throughout but the casting remains the same. I thought I hated it. But I also loved that I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
I was drawn to the confidence in this kind of film making, it’s brave, there are no rules, it’s confident and it doesn’t shy away from anything. There’s creepy sex, coercion, cannibalism, consent.
Yet, it didn’t feel to me like it was provoking just for provocations sake, it felt like a deeper commentary on power and control; perhaps it’s less of a movie, more of a social experiment, we’re unwittingly part of by giving him the power to infiltrate our brains for 2 hours 45 minutes.
