Three new movies opening this week feature a total of seven eye-opening performances from female actors in unexpected roles. Unfortunately, and all too typically, only one of them is getting a local theatrical release, and, whether coincidental or not, it’s the one that features its two stars naked for a good portion of its running time.

If you’ve heard about The Substance, French filmmaker Coralie Fargeat’s second feature, it’s likely due to the presence of Demi Moore. Anyone who says there aren’t parts for women movie stars over fifty, take note: they can always play women movie stars over fifty confronting their disposability in the eyes of the entertainment-industrial complex. (See also Robin Wright in The Congress and, more appropriately here, Bette Davis in All About Eve.) Snideness aside, the erstwhile star of Striptease, G.I. Jane, and Indecent Proposal (playing, in each, a character whose physicality provided the bulk of their societal or economic value) inhabits the role of Elisabeth Sparkle, a celebrity fitness personality who has just turned 50.

After being informed by her cartoonishly, gluttonously sleazy producer (Dennis Quaid, chewing the heads off shrimp and the scenery alike) that she’s past her sell-by date, Elisabeth receives a mysterious offer. The Substance is a serum that, once injected, will create a younger, sexier version of herself. The only catch is that Elisabeth and her simulacrum each get one week on, one week off. Desperate, she takes the plunge. In grotesque fashion, her back splits open and out slips the lither, firmer form of Sue (Margaret Qualley).

The rules of this process, while explicitly delineated in some ways, are left vague in others, which is fine in a clearly allegorical tale such as this. At first, of course, things go as planned. Sue takes over Elisabeth’s eroticized aerobics show and becomes an instant sensation. The network loves her, and Fargeat’s camera doesn’t shrink from gliding across her leotard-clad curves to prove the point. To what extent Elisabeth and Sue share a consciousness is unclear. They don’t share memories, so there’s a certain dark body-swap comedy in the development that Sue begins to resent Elisabeth’s lazy, slovenly lifestyle during her weeks while Sue’s out there shaking her money maker during hers.

That resentment surely plays into Sue’s desire to push, and eventually exceed, the limits of the Substance. As any good fan of the Brothers Grimm or The Twilight Zone can tell you, breaking the rules of magic or pseudoscience is never worth it. The final 45 minutes of The Substance are a jaw-dropping descent into outright, Grand-Guignol, Cronenberg-level body horror, about which the less said here the better.

This is a justifiably irate parable that pulls no punches in its takedown of the male gaze, even as it mimics that gaze in ways that blur the line between parody and exploitation. Viewers who were perturbed by the connection that Poor Things made between female empowerment and female sexual freedom may be equally uncomfortable with the way Fargeat encourages ogling only to clap back at it. It would have helped the film’s argument if we had learned anything about Sparkle’s life or career other than her popularity as a connoisseur of curvy calisthenics. Was she a talented actor forced by the patriarchy into this one-dimensional notoriety (à la Jane Fonda), or a fitness guru whose innovative approach to exercise has been overshadowed by her grunting lunges? Or is she someone who decided to capitalize on her concupiscence while the getting was good? If the latter, her desperation to remain relevant may be more understandable, but her ability to serve as a locus for outrage may be somewhat dimmed. In any case, The Substance is a powerful, shocking film that provides a pair of delicious performances and will be sure to spark any number of post-film discussions. It could also be this year’s best first-date litmus-test movie. (Now playing at Cinema 21, the Hollywood Theatre, Cinemagic, Regal Fox Tower, and other locations)

Positively Chekhovian in its simplicity and universality, His Three Daughters shows women dealing with aging and death from the other side of the coin. Katie (Carrie Coon), Rachel (Natasha Lyonne), and Christina (Elizabeth Olsen) have gathered in the apartment where Rachel lives with their father during his final illness. While he lies in a bedroom off-screen, hooked up to machines and rarely conscious, they rehash old resentments, share sometimes bittersweet memories, and await the impending end. As one does.

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Katie, the eldest, is a micro-manager and control freak who can’t believe dad’s DNR still hasn’t been signed. Rachel, the middle kid, is an inveterate stoner who makes a living, such as it is, betting on sports. She’s also the one who has been caring for Dad in recent years and who stands to inherit the lease. And Christina, who has travelled the farthest to be here, is a conflict-avoidant yoga practitioner and confirmed Deadhead. We even hear her singing “Scarlet Begonias” to her pop.

The movie is a showcase for its trio of leads. Coon, who has excelled in prestige TV work (The Leftovers, The Gilded Age, Fargo), delivers an assured, layered performance, one in which you can feel her thrill at delivering a series of near-theatrical monologues. Lyonne is, at first blush, playing the same sort of wisecracking, side-eyeing dame she perfected in Russian Doll and Poker Face, but Rachel is a richer, more textured character, and Lyonne ably proves she’s more than a one-trick pony. And there’s a palpable pleasure Olsen takes in her first non-Marvel role in a feature since 2017. To be able to play a normal human woman, much less a complex and contradictory one, must be a refreshing change of pace after a decade of Scarlet Witchery.

For Azazel Jacobs, the writer-director of His Three Daughters, this is only the latest, if the highest-profiled, of a series of insightful, well-cast New York-set dramas featuring stellar work from female actors. He’s worked with Debra Winger (in 2017’s The Lovers) and with Michelle Pfeiffer (in 2020’s French Exit). Here, he uses long takes, trusts his actors, and confines the action to that one apartment (plus a couple scenes in the courtyard below) to craft an emotionally potent and all-too-universal portrait of family ties in the face of mortality. (Debuting on Friday 9/20 on Netflix)

While it won’t be in the same number of award season conversations as The Substance or His Three Daughters, Omni Loop represents an endearing and inventive take on one of my favorite genres: the low-budget time-travel tale. In writer-director Bernardo Britto’s second feature, Mary Louise Parker has her most substantial role in years as Zoya Lowe, a physicist who has been diagnosed with a black hole growing in her heart that will kill her in a week. Zoya, however, is in possession of a bottle of pills that allows her to travel one week back in time. She’s able, thus, to notice the symptoms of impending fatality (a bloody nose) and revert back to the moment when her daughter (Hannah Pearl Utt) informs her of her diagnosis.

This Groundhog Day premise gets more interesting when Zoya bumps into Paula (Ayo Edebiri), a student with whom she ends up working to figure out how these pills work and whether they can send her even farther back in time so she can correct some the mistakes she’s made. Like The Substance, it’s a sci-fi premise that isn’t intended to withstand close logical scrutiny, but it does provide a nice narrative hook. The main pleasure is seeing Parker, who has, outside of TV’s Weeds, always felt criminally underused, and Edebiri, who brings the same droll minimalism as she does on The Bear, relate to each other. They make a delightful women-in-STEM duo, and if Britto can’t quite stick the landing, the result is still a smart and not-too-sappy experience. (Available on demand via numerous platforms on Friday 9/20)

ALSO THIS WEEK

FRIDAY 9/20: Returning for an encore screening after a sold-out world premiere last month, the locally made documentary Cheers! examines Portland’s status as the strip club capital of America. (Cinema 21)

FRIDAY 9/20 and SATURDAY 9/21: Italian composer Fabio Frizzi returns to Portland to perform his live scores for Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond (Friday) and Zombie (Saturday), each to be followed by a concert featuring other highlights from his legendary career as a maestro of musical horror. (Hollywood)

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FRIDAY 9/20 through THURSDAY 9/26: The groundbreaking 1964 independent drama Nothing but a Man, reportedly Malcolm X’s favorite film, looks at the relationship between a Black railroad worker (Ivan Dixon) and a preacher’s daughter (Abbey Lincoln). (Academy Theater)

SATURDAY 9/21: Zia Anger’s My First Movie, a fascinating piece of autobiographical metafiction based on her own experience making a microbudget feature, opened a couple weeks back. This screening features a post-film Q&A hosted by Carrie Brownstein and featuring the film’s co-writer and director of photography. (Tomorrow Theater)

SATURDAY 9/21 through WEDNESDAY 9/25: Errol Morris’ legendary documentary Burden of Dreams, about the making of the even more legendary Werner Herzog film Fitzcarraldo, gets a re-release in a new 4K restoration. (Cinema 21)

TUESDAY 9/24: Houndsville and The Foreground: A double feature of new locally made features, the first shot on Super 8 and featuring papier-mâché costumes and the second a contemplative examination of a filmmaker dealing with creative struggles. (Clinton St. Theater)

WEDNESDAY 9/25: Beyond Good and Evil is the Friedrich Nietzsche biopic you didn’t know you needed. Directed by Liliana Cavani (The Night Porter), it stars Dominique Sanda and Bergman regular Erland Josephson and focuses on the (perhaps apocryphal) polyamorous, opium-riddled relationship between the Ecce Homo author, his friend Paul Rée, and the woman they both adored, Lou Andreas-Salomé. (Clinton St. Theater)