“Have you ever dreamt of a better version of yourself — younger? More beautiful? More perfect?” asks the writer-director Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance . It stars Demi Moore as a film star who takes an anti-ageing serum and finds herself in a Faustian trap. Moore gets high points for candour.
It’s been over 30 years since Robert Redford paid Woody Harrelson a million dollars to sleep with Moore in the 1993 hit Indecent Proposal , the original Faustian pact that put her on a path of posh exploitation movies — GI Jane , anyone? — and now she gets to blow the lid on the whole sorry mess. It’s not so much a comeback as a self-conflagration, a bonfire of Hollywood vanities, Moore’s included. Elisabeth.