The worldwide skincare market is a billion-dollar industry that relies on our consumerist desires to keep up with the trends just as much as it depends on a product’s ability to give you that sought-after glow. It’s a complex, hot commodity business that caters to our vainest impulses, which is why, on paper, Austin Peters’ Skincare sounds like the makings of a riveting film. With subject matter rife with explorable conceits, it would be easy to assume that a film centered around two competing estheticians would have it all. Unfortunately, Skincare doesn’t deliver impressive results, leaving us with nothing more than a bland complexion.
The film follows Hope Goldman (Elizabeth Banks), a skincare specialist who has been pegged as “the original skincare queen in Hollywood.” She tirelessly caters to clients from her rented storefront and is on the cusp of launching her very own skincare line—made in Italy!—that she hopes will solve all her money problems. But when a fellow facialist moves into a store across the street from her, Hope has trouble coping with the competition. Angel Segarra (Luis Gerardo Méndez) is everything Hope isn’t: hip, trendy and confident in his products. So when someone begins to sabotage her business and hypothetical success, Angel is the only one she can think to blame. The result is a mediocre attempt at highlighting just how far some people will go to achieve fame.
Skincare is supposedly based on a real-life story in which a skincare specialist tried to take out her competition by way of a hitman. However, unlike this true story, Powers’ film isn’t anywhere near as exciting. This is largely because the movie refuses to lean into its subject matter in order to make its story unique. In fact, the film only mildly dabbles in the world of actual skincare, so much so that Hope could very well be trying to make it big as a professional doughnut maker, and the results would still be the same. This is a shame since the subject of skincare offers up so many opportunities for creative vision—who hasn’t seen overly embellished TikToks of influencers trying to sell you on their favorite skincare products (come on. You know you’ve taken the Typology skincare quiz at least once in your life) or experienced first-hand the terror that is Sephora during summer when all the tween girls are out of school, free to roam the malls as they please? There is simply so much opportunity for social/ethical/economic commentary in this film that it feels absolutely absurd that Peters chooses to essentially ignore all of it, leaving you to wonder if he even bothered to do his research.
Instead, the movie plays out like a dull, predictable dirge. Hope meets her rival. They don’t get along. Weird things start happening right around the time she meets some people who seem to be too nice for their own good (because, duh. They are). Hope slowly gets driven insane by the constant harassment and potential loss of her business until, eventually, she cracks. A sad excuse for a climactic ending occurs, and the movie ends just as mundanely as it began.
Visually, the film succeeds, but only in the way all larger-budget films succeed. The soundtrack has some humorous moments, but overall, there’s really nothing that interesting going on here. However, Banks gives it her all, and there are a handful of times when she makes you laugh out loud at quippy one-liners. But at the end of the day, even she can’t save this movie from itself. Like real-life skincare products, Skincare promises to deliver effective results, but at the end of the day, you’re probably still better off saving your money and just sticking to the cheaper drug store brands instead.
Photo courtesy of IFC Films
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