Elizabeth Banks delivers a career-best performance in Skincare, a vanity thriller that removes all filters on the beauty industry.
Director: Austin Peters
Genre: Thriller
Run Time: 97′
US Release: August 16, 2024, from IFC Films
UK Release: TBA
Where to watch: theaters
In today’s world, virtually all celebrities have their hand in the skincare or makeup game. Makeup, skin and hair care have emerged as the biggest secondary business ventures for singers, models and actors a like. Whether it be a full-fledged line, made from scratch and centered around said celebrity’s most notable features or a cheeky collaboration with an existing name brand in the hopes of promoting their latest project, you cannot escape this new form of being sold to.
However, with how fast the attention economy moves and how oversaturated these markets have become, it’s starting to take more and more for celebrities to make their products and lines relevant long enough to maintain success.
Austin Peters artfully dives into the underbelly of the rapid-paced and unforgiving beauty industry in his impressive debut narrative feature, Skincare. Set in 2013, the film revolves around famed aesthetician Hope Goldman (Elizabeth Banks, director of Cocaine Bear) who is two weeks away from launching her own skincare line after twenty years of working in Hollywood, building her name and company from scratch. As she prepares for what should be her moment in the sun, which she has fought tooth and nail for, Hope’s life is thrown into chaos when a rival facialist, Angel Vergara (Luis Gerardo Méndez) opens a facial spa directly across from hers.
As she grows nervous about what this competitor’s arrival means for the future of her fragile business, her email gets hacked, her personal information is doxxed and her dreams of success begin to slowly slip out of her painfully firm grasp. Enlisting the help of her new friend Jordan (Lewis Pullman, of Lessons in Chemistry), a Los Angeles transplant who is an aspiring photographer turned aspiring life coach, she sets out to determine who is trying to cause her downfall on the cusp of her greatest success.
The film is inspired by real-life aesthetician Dawn DaLuise, who in 2014 was arrested on suspicion of ordering a hit against a beauty industry rival. After ten months in prison, she was declared not guilty of the charges and came back to the skincare industry embracing her public ordeal by going under the new name “Killer Facials”.
There’s a lot that Peters is able to eloquently achieve in his first feature. Skincare is a thoughtful deep dive into the attention economy we have become enveloped in and the lengths we’ll go to in the name of relevancy and success. While the events that inspired the film are from over 10 years ago, the messages the story centers on are as relevant now as they were then. Hope as a character is akin to any present-day aesthetician/makeup artist who is trying to break into the beauty industry with their own product line.
While she has spent twenty years building her public image and credibility, working tirelessly for any ounce of acknowledgment she has received, she’s still only on the cusp of the level of success she wants to achieve. This skincare launch is what will send her into the orbit she has longed to be a part of, and a brand new, seemingly untested, kid has swooped in and jeopardized everything. She has never been able to rest on her laurels, she once again must vie for relevancy in an industry where a new product line seems like a drop in the ocean.
There’s symmetry and poetry with the themes of this story and its revolution around skincare. As a character, Hope is spiraling out of control as she tries to keep up and perfect her public image prior to her launch. Her business focuses on perfecting imperfections, fixing flawed appearances and presenting a clean image.
Peters masterfully creates these parallels between the focus on skincare and the film’s central themes with his shooting style. He uses tight shots of the character’s faces, highlighting their flaws and imperfections as they desperately try to achieve an unobtainable level of beauty and effervescence. It’s not that they are not attractive, but Peters shoots them in a light that shows the wrinkle creases you get when you wear makeup all day or the dry skin you get when you rub your nose too many times in a row. Hope’s greatest strength is that she can read people based on the way they take care of their skin and Peters tries to mimic this through his close-up shots to the audience.
Hollywood and the skincare industry are these two concepts that are innately linked with beauty and light. However, in Skincare Peters removes all filters we subconsciously put on these concepts in order to show the viewer the dark, gritty and ugly reality of the inner workings of these places that have almost evolved into unobtainable, mythical concepts. He shows us all the “flawless” images are simply smoke and mirrors.
Skincare shines its brightest when it lets Banks and Pullman’s natural charisma and magnetic charm take center stage. This is the role Elizabeth Banks was born to play. She portrays Hope with the perfect mixture of jaded complicity and psychotic ambition a woman 20 years in Hollywood might possess. Watching her spiral into her deepest insecurities is so fun it will make you feel guilty for deriving so much enjoyment from her character’s total breakdown. Banks is able to give a rare sense of depth and levity to a woman who seems inexcusably greedy and entitled.
The only flaw in Pullman’s performance is that it was simply deserving of more screen time. Whenever he enters a scene he has the rare ability to effortlessly pull the audience into his orbit. The character of Jordan, while central to the plot, seems to be used sparingly for some reason even though he is one of the film’s strongest pillars. The inconsistency of his character turns into a glaring plot hole as the third act of the film unveils itself and the slow build of his character formulates into an unimpressive dud of a plot resolution.
Unfortunately, this is a recurring theme of the third act. With a dreamlike score, rising tensions and rapid momentum leading into the film’s resolution the audience is left wanting more as Skincare begins to implode in on itself right as tensions reach their very highest. The first two acts of the film build a palpable tension with a certain type of unpredictability in the air. The twists and turns of the film aren’t particularly hard to guess, but there is still a sense that more is coming after things are slowly revealed. However, more never does. It feels like Peters wanted so badly to capture the loss of control Hope experiences, but in committing to that completely the movie loses control of its focus along with her.
Skincare is a wild ride that is guaranteed to make your pulse race. Peters’ style is reminiscent of a far more seasoned features director and his vision is brought to life by Elizabeth Banks and Lewis Pullman’s pure star power. While the film becomes too ambitious to be concluded in a way that satiates the momentum the story has built, it does not cancel out the fun the audience will have along the way. This story is an unflinching look at unchecked ambition and the lengths we will go to when we are on the cusp of realizing our greatest dreams.
Skincare will be released in US theaters on August 16, 2024.
