The bizarre truth behind The Substance

Reflection on the movie The Substance

There are movies that you don't just watch, but that keep pulling at you, confronting you with something that moves beneath the surface of the everyday. Coralie Fargeat's The Substance is one such movie. A grim mirror of our obsession with external identity, a theme that is rarely far away in my profession as a cosmetic doctor.

Between self and self-image

Demi Moore's character, Elizabeth, is forced to share her existence with a younger version of herself, Sue. One week, she's the older woman, the next week she's her fresh doppelganger. This seemingly absurd construction, two versions of one body in compulsory rotation, touches on a core that we encounter every day in cosmetic medicine: the conflict between current self-perception and an idealized past. People then talk about aging as if it were a loss. But in reality, it's an accumulation of memories, roles, faces. The film makes this conflict a nightmare, but in practice, the conflict is more subtle, dormant: clients who do not simply want to look younger, but who are looking for a point of recognition between who they once were and who they became.

The illusion of transformation

The Substance does away with the fantasy of transformation, the idea that we can reprogram ourselves, reset ourselves, start over with a different guise. Anyone who tries that quickly discovers that the old self does not disappear, but locks in, stuns, fights back.

I sometimes see it, the silent disappointment after a treatment that is technically perfect but chafing psychologically. Because the procedure widened rather than narrowed the gap between the inside and the outside. Because we thought we were going to close a chapter while it just kept living under the skin.

Beauty as a dialogue

Elizabeth and Sue's tragedy is not that they change, but that they don't recognize each other's right to exist. That one may only exist at the expense of the other. In reality, the strength lies in coexistence.

Real beauty does not come from replacement, but from attunement. Between the face and the memory of it. Between the skin of today and the stories of the past. Cosmetic treatments are at their best when they facilitate this inner dialogue, not to drown out a version of the self, but to bring them closer together.

What lies behind the mirror

The film confronts us with the question: what remains if we confuse the mask with the face? In my work, I ask another question: what comes out when someone dares to recognize themselves in reflection without losing themselves in an ideal image?

I don't believe in correction, I do believe in reconciliation. Not in reversing, but in building on with gentleness, precision and psychological awareness. Because even the most advanced filler or laser treatment can do nothing about an identity crisis that rages on deeper layers.

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Anyone who recognizes themselves in multiple layers of time, young, older, changing, does not have to delete anything to become visible again. The trick is not to stop time, but to make it visible in a way that is right. Not perfect, but real.

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