The award-winning film became a bloodbath: Fun to exaggerate

I write as I film. It's fun to exaggerate, one step away from reality.

When TT meets her in Cannes in May, it's the day after the film's gala premiere and Coralie Fargeat has not yet recovered from all the cheers and applause.

That a genre film like this was invited to a festival like Cannes, it's risky, it can go well, it can go badly. I was extremely tense, but when I heard the applause at the end, it was just "they're on board".

Fargeat broke through seven years ago with her bloody and acclaimed revenge film "Revenge". Since then, she has been working to get the opportunity to make "The Substance".

Star on the decline

In the film, Demi Moore plays Elisabeth, a TV star on the decline. She is offered a way back to youth and beauty by injecting a fluid, "the substance". When Elisabeth takes the shot, a kind of younger version of herself emerges from her body. The young variant can only stay in the world for seven days, then a new injection is required.

For Coralie Fargeat, Demi Moore was an obvious choice for the lead role.

I read her autobiography, which showed her as a tough, instinctive, and smart woman. It made me see her in a whole new way and I felt that she would be perfect. She liked the script, thought it forced her to expose herself in every way. We had to feel that we trusted each other.

Wave of female horror

Fargeat talks about how she has been inspired by works such as "The Picture of Dorian Gray" and "Frankenstein" and the myth of Faust. She also mentions the wave of young French female directors making genre-crossing horror, including Noémie Merlant and Julia Ducournau.

French film today gives us the opportunity to make films that take risks and that allow us to tell stories about things we've experienced as women. It's still the male gaze that dominates, but it's starting to change, she says.