Skincare Review

These days, it’s difficult to say anything new or groundbreaking about Los Angeles and the people that inhabit the city. That doesn’t stop Skincare from trying while having fun in the process. Hope Goldman (Elizabeth Banks) is first seen getting ready for a talk show, as the scene is spliced with a moment teasing the ending: a framed portrait of herself surrounded by police lights.

Hope is part of the old guard, if you will. Although she is not an actress and is initially uncomfortable in front of a camera, she assists the stars in getting feature-ready by being a renowned facialist about to launch her new line of skincare products. For those who know, the design of the items is reminiscent of raiding your mother’s cabinet, down to the typography. It’s classic, it’s elegant… until it’s not. Across the street, a newer, younger skincare business called Sparkle by Angel moves in. Where her studio is clean and pristine, Angel (Luiz Gerardo Méndez) adorns his parlour with neon signs and beaded doorways. After witnessing this, Hope’s Gen-X paranoia, blended with aspects of prejudice, begins to creep in.

The majority of the film hinges on Hope’s convinced reality of being in a rivalry with Angel. She receives strange texts of herself being filmed. Her tyres get slashed. Her email gets hacked, and men are sent to her studio looking for, well, a different type of skincare. And then, in walks Jordan, a “life coach” played by Lewis Pullman, who not only offers Hope a romance with a younger man but also the opportunity to play the role of the saviour. (As expected, he is pulling all of the strings behind the scenes in a less-than-surprising reveal of police footage.)

Skincare works at its best when it allows Banks, Mendéz, Pullman, and even the car repair shop’s owner, Armen (Erik Palladino) to be as unhinged as possible. Although the film doesn’t go nearly as far as you might hope into campy territory, the cat-and-mouse-esque catastrophes pile up, creating a trail of death and destruction that stems from pure jealousy. By the film’s end, Hope spends time getting her beauty regimen in order before being arrested. The camera lingers on her just long enough, proving she is finally comfortable in front of the lens and ready for her close-up, and taking a page out of Sunset Boulevard in the process.

★★★1/2

Playing as part of the BFI London Film Festival on October 12 and October 18 / Elizabeth Banks, Lewis Pullman, Luiz Gerardo Méndez, Michaela Jaé Rodriguez, Nathan Fillion / Dir: Austin Peters / 15