Coralie Fargeat got a lot of mileage out of her feature film THE SUBSTANCE as the writer and director. The film played in many festivals and earned award nominations for acting, writing, and directing. The film has been one hell of a calling card for her and only good things should happen for Coralie. Right? Not at all.
Coralie first came to our attention during festival season when she single-handedly decided to pull THE SUBSTANCE from the 2024 Camerimage Film Festival because a high level person at the festival made chauvinistic comments in poor taste that Coralie found offensive. Nevermind that she could have attended and pushed back on the comments in a public forum in front of the world and nevermind that the cast and crew and everyone else put their blood, sweat, and tears into this experimental film so that it could be seen by as many people around the world. Coralie only cared about Coralie.
Not to be outdone by her festival power move, Coralie then went for the jugular. The person initially hired as the head of the hair department on THE SUBSTANCE, Frederique Arguello, made some perceived missteps early on during shooting and Demi Moore took offense to them. As punishment, Frederique was relegated to working on all hairs unrelated to Demi (and then had to leave the shoot early for personal reasons) and her assistant in the hair department, Marilyne Scarselli, was promoted to focus on Demi and others. She (and the rest of the teeam, including Frederique) did a great job and won all sorts of awards.
However, when it came time for Academy award nominations for Hair and Makeup, sometimes Frederique’s name was included in the group nominated. Sometimes, not. It’s absurd. She should have always been included without question because Marilyne was always included no matter how good or bad Frederique’s work was. One cannot include one and not the other.
So, what did Coralie do when it came time to the submission of acceptable names for the Makeup and Hair Category from THE SUBSTANCE for the Oscars? She wrote a secret letter to the Academy advocating for Marilyne to be included and for Frederique to be left out. Wow!!
Can you imagine the type of director who would sabotage a member of the crew who was not fired from the production? Can you imagine a director who allows the well known lead actress to influence ‘below the line’ nominations? Can you imagine a director, setting all of the other stuff aside, making a God complex type of decision as though she was the judge and jury?
And then there is Coralie’s annoyingly meticulous directing style which did not take into the account the wear and tear of prosthetics being worn by Demi. Not only did she piss off Demi for this, but she also turned off Margaret Qualley who plays Demi’s younger self for reasons Margaret refuses to divulge. Neither star will work with Coralie again. That’s the word on the street.
Coralie should be ashamed of herself for these ego driven choices–and if we were asked to work on a film that she was directing, our response would be ‘thanks, but no thanks.’ Film production is hard enough without having to keep your head on a swivel in case the director diminishs your efforts behind your back. We’d rather work for someone else less talented where the director has our back and treats us the same so long as get end credit on the film.
Karma always comes back around so let’s see how it kicks Coralie in the ‘you know what’ when she needs someone to advocate on her behalf in a situation where she desperately needs support…here’s hoping those she reaches out to does to her what she did to Frederique and the others.