Skincare Converts a Real Case into Superficial Satire

The beauty industry has long been rife with grifters preying on invented insecurities, and the advent of social media has only exacerbated the consumerist drive to correct (or in more PC terms, perform “self-care” on) bodily features deemed unattractive by an abstract haute hivemind. Of course, women and femmes are the primary targets of this bombardment of targeted ads promoting supposed beauty enhancements, which typically entail sinking money in a pricey product or procedure. Hope Goldman (Elizabeth Banks) understands the stakes of this business all too well, both as a famed facialist for the stars as well as a woman rapidly reaching middle age in youth-obsessed Hollywood. Unfortunately, the ageist and misogynistic nature of cosmetic culture are left totally unexamined in Skincare, the feature debut from director Austin Peters.
Skincare‘s screenplay—co-written by Peters, Sam Freilich and Deering Regan—is inspired by celebrity facialist Dawn DaLuise’s arrest, subject of tabloid headlines back in 2014, but rather than heightening the intrinsic allure of the story, this fictionalization winds up muddling it. Greg Nichols’ 2015 Los Angeles Times piece on DaLuise’s case spins a far more riveting yarn than Skincare, which instead constructs a convoluted central conspiracy without the guts to critique the broader industry and cultural attitude it engages with.
The film opens with Goldman taping a news segment promoting her new Italian-made skincare line, which launches in two short weeks. “I don’t wanna date myself here,” she says with a dainty throat clear, “but reputation is everything in this business. I don’t see my life, who I am, as separate from my work.” This blurred line between Hope’s professional and personal worlds is precisely what leads to her initial spiral, especially when a rival facialist Angel (Luis Gerardo Mendez) opens a studio right across the street from hers.
You see, just under the taut façade of Hope’s success lie rampant financial troubles (her rent is past due, and her longtime landlord grows tired of her tardiness), anxiety over the prospective success of her new product line and the pervasively exploitative expectations of the sleazy men in her life. All of these stressors come to a head when she wakes up one morning to find that her entire client list has been sent an email blast full of sexual obscenities and candid confessions about her debts. “I’ve been hacked!” Hope screeches at her business partner Marine (Michaela Jae Rodriguez) upon entering her studio. Feeling immediately ostracized as her reputation tanks, Hope turns to a young life coach named Jordan (Lewis Pullman) for guidance on how to get back at Angel, who she suspects is tarnishing her good name in order to elevate his own.