Elizabeth Banks in the story of the obsessed beautician

At the beginning skin careIn Austin Peters’ smart feature debut, Hope Goldman takes the reigns. Elizabeth Banks plays an L.A.-based esthetician in the midst of launching her line of Italian-made moisturizers, cleansers and serums. Hope is an old-fashioned cosmetics saleswoman, and after 20 years of peeling Hollywood’s most expensive faces, she’s ready to let the regular people in on the secret. There’s just one problem: a new spa has opened across the street and its owner, Angel Vergara (Luis Gerardo Mendez), is ready to take it over, sparking a fierce competition.

skin care This film, as the first title card states, is a fictionalized account of a true story. The film bears some resemblance to the one-sided feud between West Hollywood makeup artists Dawn DaLuise and Gabriel Suarez. About a decade ago, DaLuise served time in prison for trying to solicit Suarez’s murder. (A jury eventually acquitted her.) The real case remains a tangled web of accusations, hearsay, and rumor: DaLuise insists to this day that she was set up by two stalkers. skin careIn this book, written by Peters, Sam Freilich, and Dearing Regan, the threads of this twisted story are pulled together to weave a thorny and somewhat entertaining narrative about fame, reputation, and the obsession with holding on to both.

The film is set in 2013, before some users’ 15 minutes of fame could stretch to endless hours on social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok. There was a desperate energy to that period, one that is captured well here by Christopher Ripley’s dark, desaturated aesthetic. The generous use of close-ups—particularly Hope’s eyes, blackened with dark kohl—creates a claustrophobic atmosphere, and composer Fatima Al Qadiri’s guitars (Atlantic, Searching for Mavis BaconThe soundtrack lends the film a haunting, eerie quality. Eager to capitalize on the internet and addicted to the promise of hype culture, this decade of ambition has blurred the line between the private and public selves. Hope sums up the sentiment of the time in a TV interview: “I don’t see my life, or who I am, as separate from my work.” Angel’s arrival threatens not just Hope’s work but her sense of self.

Discovering the true hope that Goldman is guiding many skin careThe film follows the stages of her obsession. When strange things start happening to her—a hacker infiltrates her mailing list and sends lewd emails to her clients; someone slashes her tires—Hope becomes convinced that Angel is ruining her life. A chance encounter with Jordan (Lewis Pullman), a multi-talented life coach, leads to an unlikely partnership in which the two try to counter the damaging attacks on Hope’s business and get her life back on track.

Peters handles the moving parts of skin care The film rarely stumbles in its propulsive pacing. The characters are brilliantly introduced and their backstories told. As Hope’s obsession with Angel grows, it’s hard to shake the sense of impending trouble. It’s a shame, then, when skin care This kind of film is slacking off, allowing its sense of tension to slip. The focus on leading us from scene to scene denies the audience the chance to enjoy the world of the beauty expert—and to understand the rules that govern this ruthless profession. skin care Shares a specialized atmosphere and privacy with Medusa Deluxe, Thomas Hardiman’s thriller about the competitive world of hairdressing. But in this film, Hardiman immerses viewers in a charged, encrypted ecosystem, and in addition to solving a murder, he investigates the unspoken rules of beauticians.

Perhaps more curiosity here could have led to insight into other characters. Sure, this is Hope’s world, but what about Angel, whose salon offers the sought-after anti-aging technology? Or Hope’s assistant and publicist Marin (an underused Michaela Jay Rodriguez), who at one point reminds Hope how much her life depends on the success of this business? More attention to them could have opened the door to more revelations. skin care To delve into Hollywood’s obsession with youth (putting the film in conversation with Coralie Farguet’s Cannes hit) The material) and generational tensions between old-school and new-school beauty experts. The potential to explore these eccentricities was already there in Peters’ story; it just required some peeling.