'I LOVE TO PAIR HUMOUR AND HORROR'

Director Coralie Fargeat speaks about her body horror film, The Substance, impossible beauty standards for woman, working with Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley, and more

- NAMRATA JOSHI

FRENCH director-writer Coralie Fargeat's second feature The Substance had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival this year where it won the best screenplay award. The body horror film stars Demi Moore as an ageing star Elizabeth, who gets dropped unceremoniously from her long-running TV show. She takes to a serum called The Substance to temporarily create a younger version of herself, Sue, played by Margaret Qualley. As things take one bizarre turn after another, Fargeat builds up a stinging critique of ageism and lookism and the impossible standards of beauty that women are expected to live up to.

After playing recently in India at the MAMI Mumbai Film Festival, the film dropped on MUBI today. In this interview, Fargeat speaks about the body horror genre and the portrayal of women's bodies in films, critiquing the way women are looked at by society and working with Moore and Qualley. Excerpts: What is your take on the body horror genre? I would cow that it's overything related to how we see our body and the fear that we can have towards it-how it can transform and how we may want to improve it. We have often wanted to escape the body we have and create something else out of it, or make it last longer, or get control over it. But in the end, it's the only thing that we don't have control over.

The film blends humour and horror. How did you decide to do that?

A genre film is paired almost always with humor. It allows all the violence and the socio-political issues to go through to the audience in a bearable way. I'm not so much interested in realism and violence in my films but in transcending it and creating something that becomes almost like pop art. I think it's a great way to relieve all the tension. So, I love to pair humour and horror.