Buddy Love – Forbidden Love Cousins: Lolita, Romeo & Juliet, Harold and Maude, Brokeback Mountain, An Officer and a Gentleman, Dirty Dancing, Beauty and the Beast, The Graduate, My Beautiful Laundrette, Blue Is the Warmest Color

Opening Image

A freshly-cracked egg lies on a blue surface. It is injected with some kind of serum and the single yolk becomes a double yolk. This is our first indication that nothing will be subtle about The Substance—and that’s what makes it fun.

We cut to workmen installing a star on a Hollywood Boulevard-esque walkway for Elisabeth Sparkle, a famous and beloved actress. At first, fans rush over to see her name, “ooh”-ing and “ahh”-ing, but all too quickly, the overheard conversations go something like, “Oh, her. She was in that movie, I can’t remember the name.”

The star gets weathered, cracks, and someone accidentally drops a burger and fries on it, not bothering to wipe up the ketchup. We stare at the red, gooey mess… and buckle up for what’s to come.

Set-Up

In her thesis world, Elisabeth (Demi Moore) is an award-winning actress who’s managed to stay marginally relevant by starring on a TV fitness show Sparkle Your Life. She’s trim and gorgeous and you might just mistake her for a 30-year old, but no, it’s her 50th birthday (the same age as Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, the quintessential aging actress film) and everybody knows that’s when women lose “it.”

Of course, her boss Harvey (a gleefully repulsive Dennis Quaid) can’t express what “it” is; all he knows is that only younger woman are in possession of “it.” As Harvey chews shrimp covered in mayo with his mouth wide open (honestly the grossest part of the movie and that’s saying something), he fires Elisabeth because “I have to give the people what they want. And people always want something new.” Elisabeth is so stunned by this news that she wanders out of the building and promptly gets into a car accident.

Theme Stated

The theme is uttered a bit later than usual, but it hits hard. The mysterious voice of the Substance company lays out rules for Elisabeth, ending with “The only thing to remember is, you are one; you can’t escape from yourself.” A woman can’t run away from her aging body, but she sure will try, as evidenced by the 47 billion dollar global market for anti-aging products.

Catalyst

At the hospital, the ER doctor’s preternaturally young and attractive assistant slips something into Elisabeth’s pocket—a flash drive entitled “The Substance” along with a scribbled note, “It changed my life.”

Debate

While Elisabeth ponders this, she runs into Fred (Edward Hamilton-Clark), an old high school friend who had—and obviously still has—a big crush on her. Fred looks his age and is dorky-sweet, giving Elisabeth his phone number on a scrap of paper ripped from his cholesterol test results. There’s no way in hell she’s ever going to call him, of course; she is the famous Elisabeth Sparkle, after all.

Or is she? After receiving flowers from Harvey that stress “you were amazing,” Elisabeth plugs the flash drive into her computer and is immediately drawn into a sales pitch that every woman in the modern world has heard: “You… only better.”

One single injection of the substance unlocks a person’s DNA, splitting the body into two, and there’s only one caveat: it’s a timeshare. Each body gets exactly seven days to be conscious and then they must switch.

Elisabeth Sparkle is no anti-aging-miracle-cure virgin, so she scoffs and tosses the flash drive in the trash. But after a drunken night of tearfully staring at all the awards from her glory days, she fishes it right back out again and calls the number. After retrieving the kit from a very seedy building with a very white inner sanctum, Elisabeth lays out the miracle potions that will start the process.

Break into Two

Elisabeth stands in the bathroom mirror examining her naked body. She picks up the Activator (don’t forget, single use only!) and just like a heroin (or Ozempic) addict, injects herself.

Fun and Games

And let the body horror begin! Elisabeth collapses in agony and we watch the iris of her eye split into two, à la the Opening Image egg. Her skin convulses, her back splits open in bloody glory, and an elbow protrudes. That young and fresh appendage belongs to Sue (Margaret Qualley), Elisabeth’s “better version,” who tumbles right out of her back crack.

Sue looks at her brand-new lithe body, perky breasts, and unlined face in the mirror with ecstatic amazement. Talk about an antithesis world!

Sue sews up Elisabeth’s back with black twine and “stabilizes” herself with spinal fluid (and some very juicy-sounding ASMR), then puts an IV into Elizabeth to feed her inactive body. Next it’s out on the town as Sue goes to the audition to be the new host of Elisabeth’s old exercise show.

And let the male gaze begin! Harvey is entranced by Sue and will even work around the weird schedule—she has to be out of town every other week “to take care of her sick mother”—in order to build the new show around her. Pump It Up is of much stronger stuff than Elisabeth’s Jane Fonda-ish workout: all T and A and soft-porn closeups of highly-waxed nethers. Exactly “what the people want.”

After one blissful week, Sue dutifully changes places with Elisabeth, a painful and ultimately humiliating affair as Elisabeth has nothing to occupy her seven cognizant days but eating, watching TV, and picking up the next Substance kit. When Sue comes roaring back, she builds a little room to hide Elisabeth’s body, but it’s hard to tell whether it’s from kindness or disgust for her other self.

Hard to tell, that is, until Sue pours herself into a black leather catsuit to go score some hookups to bring back to the apartment. Now Elisabeth’s womb-room is very convenient.

B Story

Elisabeth’s B Story relationship is with herself, a metaphorical venture into the philosophy of mind-body dualism which posits that the mind and the body are separate entities that can exist independently of each other. At first an amiable alliance, Elisabeth and Sue start to fight for dominance, coming to despise one another’s existence. Their relationship is a master class in self-hatred.

Midpoint

Midway through getting it on with the hottie Troy (Oscar Lesage), Sue’s internal alarm clock goes off—it’s time to switch bodies. But he’s so hot! This just isn’t fair! The greedy Sue harvests just a wee bit of extra fluid from Elisabeth’s body and experiences a false victory when Troy says, “What did you do? You seem even more beautiful than before!”

Bad Guys Close In

But of course, this radiance comes at a cost. When Elisabeth wakes up, she is horrified to find that one of her fingers has withered. In a panic, she calls the Substance number and tattles on Sue, only to be reminded that Sue is her, they are one, and to respect the balance.

“Balance” is not what Elisabeth is, or ever has been, good at. She starts to unravel quickly. Everywhere she goes and everything she does convinces her that “Elisabeth” is obsolete.

In a truly heartbreaking sequence, Elisabeth excitedly gets ready for a date with dorky-sweet Fred, only to be progressively haunted by Sue’s youthful presence until she self-destructs, tearing at her face until it is raw, then binge-eating everything in the refrigerator.

Sue’s experiencing her own problems. After a laugh-out-loud (or perhaps puke-out-loud) nightmare where she pulls a chicken leg from her own navel, Sue primes for battle. No one, and certainly not her old, fat, bitchy doppelganger is going to keep her down!

Sue starts taking more and more of Elisabeth’s juice to stay longer in her young body and when she finally gives in and switches back, half of Elisabeth’s entire body is withered.

Enraged, Elisabeth does battle of her own. She gorges herself on French food and totals the apartment, covering the huge windows with newspaper to taunt her other self. When Sue reemerges, she goes ballistic and plunges the needle into Elisabeth’s back, filling jar after jar with her fluid. That old hag is going to pay!

Unfortunately, since our two gals are one, Sue’s bill eventually comes due. The day before her big appearance as the host of the network’s New Year’s Eve Show, Sue runs out of the stabilizing fluid and has to switch back to regenerate it.

Elisabeth, her body almost completely destroyed, stands in front of her bathroom mirror in stunned anguish; what has Sue done to her?! No. What has she done to herself? Elisabeth calls the Substance company and obtains Termination fluid for Sue, but she’s unable to bring herself to do the deed, instead rejuvenating Sue with her own blood.

You’d think Sue would be grateful, but no. She attacks Elisabeth and they beat the living shit out of each other.

All Is Lost

Sue murders Elisabeth. Much more than a whiff of death, this is a violent, bloody, fleshy stink.

Dark Night of the Soul

Sue realizes that she’s essentially killed herself and breaks down in anguished tears.

Break into Three

But hey, there’s only so long one can grieve the death of one’s host body—especially when there’s an enormous billboard of your gorgeous puss right outside the window!

Finale

Sue gathers the team of her production assistants and executes the plan: she’s doing that damn New Year’s Eve show, even with her head buzzing and her body rebelling. How bad could it be?! Pretty bad, actually. As Sue hides out in the ladies’ room, her teeth and fingernails fall out and one of her ears drops off into the bathroom sink.

Sue digs down deep and gives it one last go, rushing home to find the left-over Activator fluid from the Substance kit. Although it clearly says “SINGLE USE ONLY,” Sue can only remember the original promise: You… only better.

She injects herself and gives birth to one of the most gruesome high tower surprises in recent memory: “Monstro ElisaSue,” a Frankenstein’s monster of twisted, mangled flesh with both Sue and Elisabeth somewhere inside. Yep, we’ve reached synthesis and it ain’t pretty.

Showtime! With Elisabeth’s terrified face protruding from her back, multiple boobs poking out of various mounds of skin, and her (very) large intestine trailing behind, Monstro gets ready for her spotlight. She dons her evening gown, attaches earrings to her most prominent head lumps, and attaches a cut-out of Elisabeth’s smiling Sparkle Your Life poster to her face—with strains of Bernard Herrmann’s “Vertigo” theme playing in the background.

In front of a huge crowd of confused patrons, Monstro steps to the mic and croaks out a welcome, but her Elisabeth mask promptly falls off. Cue the torches and pitchforks! The crowd becomes an angry mob screaming for blood and Monstro delivers; someone chops off one of her arms and she becomes a fountain, drenching the audience in gore.

Her entire body void of fluid, Monstro crawls out of the building and disintegrates.

Final Image

Except for one little patch of viscera—the part that holds Elisabeth’s face. It crawls onto—you guessed it!— her pavement star from the Opening Image. For just a moment the face smiles, remembering the adulation it and its body once received, then melts into a red, gooey mess that gets obliterated by a street cleaner. Elisabeth Sparkles was dying to be young and beautiful… and she succeeded.