Although The Substance borrows from many things—particularly Death Becomes Her—when it comes to satirically addressing the subject of female aging in Hollywood, a somewhat surprising nod in Coralie Fargeat’s latest film is the one to Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. Granted, if any “old queen” knew a thing or two about the fear of becoming ancient (and the loss of looks that goes with it), it was Wilde. As a matter of fact, the crux of his inspiration for the story stemmed from an artist acquaintance of his, Frances Richards, painting his portrait after she moved to London from Ottawa.

According to Wilde’s account of how the notion for Dorian arose, “In December, 1887, I gave a sitting to a Canadian artist who was staying with some friends of hers and mine in South Kensington. When the sitting was over, and I had looked at the portrait, I said in jest, ‘What a tragic thing it is. This portrait will never grow older and I shall. If it was only the other way!’ The moment I had said this it occurred to me what a capital plot the idea would make for a story. The result is Dorian Gray.” Indeed it was, with the artist role going to Basil Hallward in the story. In the midst of painting his “muse,” Dorian, Hallward is observed by Lord Henry Wotton, the person who serves as the conduit for the eventual Faustian pact Dorian makes. Granted, there is never a specific moment when this pact is described—it’s merely implied that Dorian has sold his soul to achieve eternal youth and beauty by exclaiming, “If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that—for that—I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!” And Wotton is only too ready to act as the proverbial bad influence that helps to turn him completely soulless.

It’s a pact similar to the one Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) makes with the disembodied voice in charge of doling out “the substance.” Which is all part of a semi-elaborate process that allows for a duplicate “younger, better” version of Elisabeth to split from her very being. More specifically, “Sue” (Margaret Qualley) spawns herself out of Elisabeth’s back—cut right down the middle in order to accommodate the arrival of this newer model. To be sure, it certainly has more muss and fuss involved than allowing one’s soul to be trapped in a painting. And, incidentally, Elisabeth does have a very Dorian Gray-esque portrait hanging up in her massive abode. A large, glossy photo of herself in one of the signature leotards that has kept her vaguely famous thanks to her aerobics program, Sparkle Your Life with Elisabeth (to be clear, it’s not the 1980s, it’s just that the universe Fargeat has created with The Substance is somewhat alternate to ours). For those wondering, yes, Jane Fonda’s aerobics era was something of an inspiration.

In any case, the image of Elisabeth is a smiling one (because “pretty girls should always smile!”) that we’re first introduced to after she hurtles a snow globe with a figurine modeled after her younger self in it. The self that once won an Academy Award (as the show’s producer, Harvey [Dennis Quaid], seethes, “When was that? Back in the thirties?”). The self that managed to secure her a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame that we first see at the very beginning of the movie, when it’s being freshly cemented, and Elisabeth later shows up to debut it in front of her then still adoring legions of fans.

After a while, however, the fans lose interest. She’s not the “hot, new” thing anymore. And that is how women (especially women in Hollywood) are viewed: as things meant to be replaced. Subbed out for a shinier edition every few years. But Elisabeth is sick of being treated both disposably and invisibly. So when she heaves her snow globe at the portrait of herself (effectively throwing her young self into her old self), shattering it so that the sparkle-filled liquid spills all over the image and oozes down the length of her face, she is opening herself to the Faustian pact required to get back the youth she so desperately craves. Unlike Dorian, of course, she isn’t still young enough to hold onto the way she looks as a twenty-something forever, instead given the “opportunity” to keep living out her “being a star” dreams through Sue. Her human-sized appendage/albatross. As the Faustian voice warns Elisabeth, “You are one.” Even if that’s difficult for either woman to fathom considering how different they look from each other. And as “one,” they share the same consciousness. Which is why, whenever Elisabeth’s consciousness is within Sue, it becomes much easier for her to balk at the rule that states she must switch back to her old husk after exactly seven days.

Whenever Sue is having too much fun (à la Dorian indulging in his most debauched whims), she decides to take more from Elisabeth’s prostrate body by injecting a syringe into her back and using it as an extra addition to the stabilizer her “other self” has been given in order to not, you know, “glitch” (blood coming out of the nose, etc.). Inevitably, there is only so much more time that Sue can buy off of Elisabeth (herself already running out of time) before the consequences start to manifest. Much in the same way that Dorian’s portrait starts to turn grisly and ghastly, Elisabeth bears the aging marks of Sue’s whimsical decadence. What’s more, Sue even decides it’s time to drag Elisabeth’s “on ice” body into a secret room no one else can access—which, of course, smacks of Dorian doing the same thing with his own portrait. The decision to “get rid of the body,” so to speak, comes from seeing Elisabeth’s portrait staring down at her one morning. She suddenly realizes that if she’s ever going to have any company over (particularly the men she wants to fuck), it would be weird and something of a challenge to explain why a picture of this supposedly random woman is up on her wall. Thus, Sue moves Elisabeth into the room she’s created by knocking out a hollow wall in the bathroom.

After she’s done dragging Elisabeth into it, she then takes the portrait down and drags it in there as well, with an intercut shot of the billboard outside Elisabeth’s window featuring a fresh-faced Sue advertising a new aerobics show coming soon. With Sue embodying the flesh-and-blood Dorian and his eternal youth and Elisabeth representing the decay and age eventually wrought by Sue’s amoral depravity, The Picture of Dorian Gray is all over The Substance.

The title The Substance itself refers to an underlying idea that there is no real substance to “just” a body—“hot” or not. The substance is in one’s consciousness itself. Which is part of why the flesh-and-blood Dorian ultimately understands that he must destroy the painting in order to break the curse, for he does arrive at the conclusion that this formerly-viewed-as-a-blessing phenomenon is just that: a curse. Therefore, he opts to stab the painting with the same knife that he killed the portrait’s painter with. Alas, just as it is in The Substance, the two are one, and the flesh-and-blood Dorian bears the brunt of the wound, dying in front of the painting of himself as the old, decrepit man he had avoided being for so long. The painting, instead, now looks like his young self as it once did before. Order restored after so much time was borrowed.

Elisabeth and Sue’s fate isn’t nearly as tidy, with a body horror coup de grâce that might even make Wilde blanch. Even so, its parallels to the Wildean classic are undeniable, and only further enhance the nature of a tale as old as mirrors: people wanting to cling to their youth forever, no matter the price.