Demi Moore says that the US is “built on Puritans, religious fanatics and criminals” and that “you’re kind of seeing [as much] in our election right now”.

Moore was speaking at the French premiere of the body-horror satire The Substance, which took place at the Cinémathèque Française in Paris on Tuesday, the night before the US presidential election. In remarks reported by Variety, Moore related the ideological battles gripping the US to the film’s themes.

“Sexuality is always taboo,” Moore said, “and there’s a lot of fear in America around the body. That’s something I’ve never understood or related to … It never made sense why we can celebrate the body in art, but fear it in cinema.”

In The Substance, written and directed by French film-maker Coralie Fargeat, Moore plays an ageing movie star who uses a drug to produce a younger version of herself (played by Margaret Qualley).

Moore added: “Being someone of a certain age, there was greater value in showing oneself with complete abandon. Being willing to be seen with flaws, with imperfections, [as someone that is] clearly not 20 or 30 years old, being a little bit more ‘loosely wrapped’.”

As well as tackling themes around body image, The Substance has also been hailed as a distinctively female-led horror film, which Moore was happy to endorse. “I’ve been asked, could a man have directed this? And yes, maybe a man could, but I don’t think a man could have written [it].”