For his second feature film after Revenge (2018), which highlighted genre cinema with a feminist approach, Coralie Fargeat continues in the same vein with her new film, which won the screenplay award at Cannes.
What was your training?
I wanted to be a director since I was 16 or 17 and present the Fémis competition. [Ecole nationale supérieure des métiers de l’image et du son]but you had to have bac + 3. So I took the competitive exam from Sciences Po Paris. In my senior year, I attended a movie shoot. I spoke to the first assistant and told him I wanted to do an internship. A few months later, he called me. I was looking for an intern for an American film that was being filmed in France, Paris and the Luberon. I took the opportunity. I continued.
I was promoted to second assistant and began writing scripts for myself while at the same time making up short stories for television shows. My first short film, The telegramIt was very noticed at the festival. My problem was that I wanted above all to make genre films and in France there are no people for that. My first feature film, RevengeIt had to be simple and economical. It was a very linear story. I wanted scenes that would allow me to pursue my ideas and my obsessions.
How do you explain your taste for genre films?
What attracted me were unrealistic worlds, probably because I felt very inadequate and self-conscious in real life. The imagination and the journey made me feel alive. Creating fake things with real things excited me.
How did the idea for “The Substance” come about?
It’s an idea that has been with me since I was a child. How should you look when you are a girl? It was never easy for me. I was quite inadequate compared to a dominant female role model. I also told myself: “When I am over 50 my life will end, no one will look at me anymore.” » It depressed me and I told myself I had to do something about it. The success of Revenge It opened doors for me and I found the freedom to express myself on this topic. I also became more aware that there was a possibility of adopting a deliberately feminine or even feminist perspective on the world. A woman, when she goes out, cannot forget her body, unlike a man.
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