Saccharine, what does it say?
The first problem of Saccharine likely lies in the overall confusion of its premise. First, it’s hard to tell whether the film aims to address eating disorders or overweight (two distinct things which, in awkward and patently old-fashioned writing, bleed into a single nebulous subject).
Then, what is it trying to pull from this reflection (the word is strong) about the arc of a young woman who would commit the irreversible to become thin? A critique of fatphobia in our societies? Not really. A warning about how we mistreat our bodies and those of others when we’re hell-bent on changing? Maybe. The story of a past trauma that now drives the body through an eating disorder? A little, but it isn’t clear.
On top of that, the not-quite-innocent theme of cannibalism is thrown in, like a spoonful of cornstarch into a sauce that’s too thin (Grave has clearly passed through here). And then the ethical question within medical studies, as well. So many threads that, taken individually or in pairs, could be fascinating and fertile ground for horror-driven arguments.
Unfortunately, Saccharine feels more like Natalie Erika James panicking at the writing and resorting to assembling a potpourri of all her ideas instead of seriously developing any of them, giving birth to yet another sub-The Substance that recycles variations we’ve heard a thousand times on the theme “a woman reshapes her body with a strange ingredient to become beautiful in the eyes of the world, and pays the price.”
Unlike Relic, whose angle allowed it to stand out in the horror films about aging, Saccharine dives straight into the bargain bin even by its inability to say anything clear, let alone say something at all. Well, almost.
Eating disorders without tact
The other big problem with the film is precisely what it says, probably without intending to. Or at least, one hopes so. Because, like many works that want to seize a major social issue as the starting point for their story without truly wrestling with it, Saccharine sprints headlong into all the pitfalls of fatphobia.
Not only does the film sustain throughout the confusion between EDs and overweight, effectively conveying the idea that a fat person eats poorly and a slender person eats well (even though we know how much wider and more complex these topics actually are), but it projects a dehumanizing gaze onto the obese body (the appearances of the infamous Bertha, among others) and stigmatises the relationship to food both in its narration and in its staging.
Fortunately, the protagonist’s friend who points out that her weight battle is unhealthy adds a bit of counterbalance to the overall fat-phobic mood, but it remains distinctly timid compared to the film’s missteps. The most significant misstep may be casting the lead as a slim actress (Midori Francis) who wears prosthetics (not very convincing, by the way) for roughly half the film.
For all the issues of representation and the use of plus-size performers, fatsuits and other VFX makeup intended to give a false heft to thin actors have rightly been criticized for years. It’s striking that Saccharine falls into such an obvious trap, with all the stigmatizing clichés that accompany it in its script, rather than approaching the issue more intelligently.
And if the only answer we can offer to this concern is “you have to go through that to depict a character who was heavy and becomes slim,” perhaps it’s time to rethink how we tell weight-related stories. But it isn’t with a film like Saccharine that we’ll get there.
