So far this year, there have been a flurry of films and TV shows centered on Hollywood stalwarts over 40: there’s Anne Hathaway looking luminous as she falls for Nicholas Galitzine in The Idea of You; Angelina Jolie bathed in an otherworldly golden light for the duration of Maria; Cate Blanchett projecting power and sophistication in Disclaimer; and Ruth Negga stealing the show in Presumed Innocent, to name but a few.
In many, if not all, of their scenes, these Oscar-winners and nominees get to radiate glamour and sex appeal—and why shouldn’t they? But alongside such glossy depictions of middle age, I’ve also been thrilled by a new set of releases from a trio of 40-something female directors that explore the knottiness of aging as a woman—holding a mirror up to society’s unattainable beauty standards and, in certain cases, gleefully smashing them to smithereens.
The first is The Substance, Coralie Fargeat’s eardrum-bursting scream of a film, which revels in cackling at the ridiculousness of everything the world expects women to be and do. It centers on Demi Moore’s Elisabeth Sparkle, a washed-up movie star whose cartoonishly misogynistic boss (Dennis Quaid) decides that she has aged out of her starring role in an ’80s-style fitness show. The decision to replace her with a younger, hotter model breeds a crippling insecurity in her that prompts her to try “the substance,” a procedure that promises to unleash a more perfect version of herself.