‘Skincare’ Movie Review: Elizabeth Banks Is Sheer Perfection In Obvious But Compelling Thriller
Photo from IFC
From Jeremy Kibler
So many movies have taken on the Los Angeles bubble in which glossy beauty and glamor hide an uglier side of human nature, so what’s another? Skincare, the narrative feature debut from music video director Austin Peters, actually takes on the beauty business as a darkly comic, ripped-from-the-headlines thriller. It’s “a fictional story inspired by true events,” but one doesn’t necessarily have to know about real-life aesthetician Dawn DaLuise to predict how the dominoes fall in this 2013-set American-Dream-gone-wrong yarn.
Elizabeth Banks makes a perfect Hope Goldman, a celebrity Hollywood aesthetician who’s launching her very own skincare line in a competitive business market. She sells the great stuff (it’s made in Italy!), and this “skincare queen” is becoming a household name, even if she’s in debt and always late on paying rent to her landlord. Once Hope notices a rival facialist, Angel Vergara (Louis Gerardo Méndez), has opened his own skincare boutique directly across from her studio, someone begins sabotaging Hope’s reputation and business. First, a vulnerable and sexually explicit e-mail she doesn’t remember writing gets sent out to everyone in her contacts. Then sex ads are being posted and unsolicited sexts. Loyal PR assistant/receptionist (Michaela Jaé Rodriguez) and her new friend, 26-year-old life coach Jordan (Lewis Pullman), try to help, but as Hope loses more and more clients to Angel, her life keeps unraveling from there.
In the satirically toned Skincare, things never pretend to look too hopeful for Hope’s defamed character and relevance. Banks has a knack for playing a charming, charismatic, if biting figure but also for showing cracks of desperation and paranoia. Hope Goldman is ruthlessly driven but still very vulnerable that when her business begins to crumble, her entire life does because it’s all she really has. This is a half-flashy, half-grounded role that had to have been specifically written for Banks. Lewis Pullman does engaging, ingratiating work, too, as Jordan, Hope’s possible love interest; while there’s an extra layer to this character that we see coming, no one could predict his memorable moment where he’s weightlifting to Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream.” It’s also fun to see Banks get a few moments with actors she’s previously worked with (including Nathan Fillion, as a hunky but slimy talk-show host, and Charlie’s Angels co-star Ella Balinska as a beautiful regular).
Director Peters definitely gives this story a suitably slick sheen, particularly in the opening montage of an aesthetician’s process cued to Queens of the Stone Age, and sometimes ratchets up Hope’s paranoia with a melodramatic score. It’s all mostly propulsive, but where the story goes is supposed to be ironic, albeit not as ironic as it should feel and therefore a little obvious.
The script, which director Peters co-wrote with Sam Freilich and Deering Regan, hues pretty closely to what we expect—the best laid plans ending in violent error—that it doesn’t leave much to think about afterwards. This isn’t to say that Skincare is completely shallow; while the film is mostly compelling in the moment, Elizabeth Banks is always perfection.
Rating: 3/5
Skincare hits theaters on August 16th, 2024.
