Horror movies have taught us to shudder before a bathroom mirror, lest an assailant suddenly appear, looming behind an unsuspecting protagonist, as the medicine-cabinet door swings shut. But not all reflections are jump scares in waiting, and not all victims and predators are distinguishable. This week brings two pictures, each a conceptually bold, mordantly funny cautionary tale, in which a mirror bears witness to an astonishing transformation—a miracle, or so it seems, that gradually curdles into a nightmare. In “A Different Man,” a disfigured face is peeled off, revealing smooth skin and chiselled features just underneath. In “The Substance,” a woman’s dream of eternal youth is fulfilled as she gives violent birth to her own younger, shapelier doppelgänger. You needn’t be a David Cronenberg fan (though I suspect one of the filmmakers is) to find yourself murmuring his most famous mantra: “Long live the new flesh.”
In “A Different Man,” a thrillingly mercurial third feature from the writer and director Aaron Schimberg, Sebastian Stan plays Edward Lemuel, a mildmannered New Yorker with a genetic disorder called neurofibromatosis. With bulging tumors above the neck, he’s “facially different,” in the parlance of a workplace sensitivity-training video in which he appears as an actor. But little such sensitivity greets Edward in the real world. People gawk and flinch on the subway; a comely neighbor, Ingrid (Renate Reinsve), upon meeting him, lets out an involuntary shriek. She and Edward soon strike up a friendship, but the suspicion lingers that Ingrid, an aspiring writer, might be nosing around for good material. Sure enough, she later drafts a semi-biographical play, titled “Edward,” which she keeps shredding and rewriting, struggling to walk an empathetic tightrope over an exploitative chasm.
This story is from the September 23, 2024 edition of The New Yorker.
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This story is from the September 23, 2024 edition of The New Yorker.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
The K-Pop King - Chairman Bang is bringing his formula for creating idols to the U.S.
Scooter Braun was in a tailspin. It was February, 2021, and the music manager, who had made his name launching the careers of Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande, was nearing forty and facing a brutal divorce. An equally nasty battle with Taylor Swift, over his ownership of her song catalogue, had sullied his public image. Rumors circulated that the future of Braun’s company, Ithaca Holdings, was in doubt. Amid this tumult, he was surprised to receive an invitation to speak with someone who had long fascinated him: the South Korean producer Bang Si-hyuk—known to admirers as Hitman Bang.
Silicon Valley's Influence Game - From crypto to A.I., tech titans are pouring money into super PACS to savage their political opponents.
One morning in February, Katie Porter was sitting in bed, futzing around on her computer, when she learned that she was the target of a vast techno-political conspiracy. For the past five years, Porter had served in the House of Representatives on behalf of Orange County, California. She’d become famous—at least, C-span and MSNBC famous—for her eviscerations of business tycoons, often aided by a whiteboard that she used to make camera- friendly presentations about corporate greed. Now she was in a highly competitive race to replace the California senator Dianne Feinstein, who had died a few months earlier. The primary was in three weeks.
TAKE TWO
\"The Hills of California\" and \"Yellow Face\" come to Broadway.
DOWNWARD SPIRALS
Missy Mazzoli's \"The Listeners\" and Jeanine Tesori's \"Grounded.\"
IT TAKES A VILLAGE
The exuberant, complicating drawings of the Shakers.
THE LONG CON
Rachel Kushner's anti-spy, anti-realism novel.
IF MEMORY SERVES
John Lewis knew how to put a legacy of heroism.
WHEN THE ICE MELTS
What the fate of the Arctic means for the rest of the Earth.
SLEEP ESSENTIAL FOR HEALTH
To achieve good health, you must maintain a regular sleep schedule, and be able to get back to sleep once you are awake.
THE SIGHTED WORLD
Growing up with the writer Ved Mehta.
