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Tag: Margaret Qualley

QuickView: The Substance (2024)

The Substance poster

“This is simply a better version of yourself.”

The Substance

Writer/director Coralie Fargeat delivers a bold vision with her second feature, an allegory of societal views on aging and the fetishisation of youth, explored through the medium of uncompromising body horror. Demi Moore’s performance as an aging star discarded by Hollywood has been widely regarded as a career best, and she fully sells Elisabeth’s extreme decision to use a secretive serum that creates a new youthful body but requires her to alternate between the two. There is significant nudity from both Moore and Margaret Qualley (as the younger self) and it is the sequences of them scrutinising their own and each other’s appearances that communicate the most — there is a tenderness tinged with jealousy toward Elisabeth’s younger self and a carelessness toward her older self. These intimate sequences at home are contrasted by more sexualised and objectifying camerawork in her professional life. The Substance certainly has more to say than Old, and Fargeat’s extreme visuals capitalise on ideas that The Neon Demon failed to execute. The film makes excellent use of architecture to unsettle the audience, with diabolically long corridors or a piercingly white sterile bathroom. Much of the film unfolds within Elisabeth’s isolated Hollywood mansion in the hills yet she is haunted by the impossibly high billboard staring through her living window, representing the inescapable images of youth thrust daily in our faces. The Substance does not preach any message beyond “the balance must be respected” and it is certainly not anti-youth, recognising that the young find themselves trapped in work so that the old can relax. The film cannot be accused of subtlety — Dennis Quaid’s lascivious Hollywood producer is presented as an avatar of grotesque consumption — but viewers will either love or hate the crass excess of its closing 20 minutes. I would have found The Substance more effective without this, but there is no doubt that Fargeat has delivered a vivid and memorable experience.

8/10

QuickView: Drive-Away Dolls (2024)

Drive-Away Dolls posters

“I’ve had it with love. I know bards and troubadours are high on it, but I don’t believe it’s relevant to the modern 20th soon to be 21st century lesbian.”

Jamie

Ethan Coen’s first feature as a solo director is a delirious sapphic road-trip set in 1999 but frequently adopting the sensibilities of exploitation movies from the decades prior. Drive-Away Dolls follows two friends on a trip to Florida, pursued by inept criminals seeking to recover a briefcase hidden in their car. In terms of classic Coen styles, it leans more toward the screwball comedy of Burn After Reading than its crime thriller elements, while visually blending eccentric antagonists, lesbian dive bars and raunchy sequences into a Lebowski-esque 90-minute fever dream. At its heart is the central friendship between Margaret Qualley’s uninhibited fast-talking Texan and Geraldine Viswanathan as her reserved and repressed best friend — your enjoyment likely hinges on how you connect with these characters and the film’s earnestly tender moments between them. Particularly by Coen standards, Drive-Away Dolls feels rough around the edges but it brings a fresh energy to its atypical queer romance and seems primed for cult appreciation rather than mainstream success.

7/10

QuickView: Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood (2019)

Once Upon A Time... In Hollywood poster

“It’s official old buddy, I’m a has-been.”

Rick Dalton

Set in the late 1960s, as Hollywood’s heydey is already drawing to a close, it is easy to see washed-up actor Rick Dalton as a vehicle for Tarantino’s anxiety about his own continuing relevance. The interwoven tapestry of stories combines real and fictional characters, allowing Tarantino to revel in the filmmaking process and insert his characters into classic movies. The introduction of Sharon Tate is intended to cast a shadow over the story and Tarantino deftly fills an extended sequence at the Manson family’s ranch with a sense of unease and dread, but he also makes a conscious decision to assume knowledge on the part of the audience. I suspect Tate’s story plays far better in the USA (where the Manson family murders are deeply ingrained in the public consciousness) than elsewhere in the world. Once Upon A Time‘s alternate reality is telegraphed early when a stuntman played by Brad Pitt bests Bruce Lee in a fight. Some may view this as disrespectful but Tarantino is obviously a fan of Lee and the entire point is the ridiculousness of this outcome. It leaves the audience guessing at how Tarantino will treat Tate’s brutal murder, particularly given Inglourious Basterds‘ loose adherence to historic fact. Although staples like chapter headings are gone, Tarantino still gets in his own way. Multiple foot shots break the immersion, feeling perfunctory and self-indulgent, and — as with The Hateful Eight — the most irritating tool is an out-of-place single-use voiceover, deployed here to summarise the events of a six-month time jump, all of which could have been communicated effectively on screen instead. Ultimately this is as much a languid movie for film lovers as it is for Tarantino fans — his ninth film sits solidly in the middle of his catalogue but, for a director appearing to question his relevance, that is no small feat.

8/10

"A film is a petrified fountain of thought."

(CC) BY-NC 2003-2023 Priyan Meewella

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