Movies | Science Fiction
‘Reality+’: Coralie Fargeat’s Excellent Precursor to ‘The Substance’
This sci-fi short film explores the loneliness of a world obsessed with altering the way we are perceived
Ten years before Coralie Fargeat wrote and directed the wonderfully disturbing body horror The Substance, she made Reality+, a short film with similar themes that explores its subject matter in a similarly horrifying way. Both works are focused on the absurdity of our relationship with our appearance, with protagonists who shun how they really look for an altered version of themselves that they can project to others. Though The Substance has dramatic elements, it largely uses humour and grotesque imagery to convey the absurdity of how we endlessly criticise our looks, paralleling this with the entertainment industry’s obsession with youth and unrealistic beauty standards.
By contrast, Reality+ is much more grounded, highlighting the loneliness endemic to a world where people struggle to live with who they are. It follows Vincent (Vincent Colombe), whose dissatisfaction with his looks causes him to undergo a procedure whereby a chip is implanted in him, transforming his appearance into whatever new version of himself he wants to look like. While anyone without the…
