The Big Picture

Skincare
struggles to find its genre, oscillating between crime thriller and dark satire.
Characters lack depth, failing to feel like real human beings.
The film’s execution is confusing and lacks clear character motivations, resulting in a muddled mess.

“This is a fictional story inspired by true events,” the screen warns before Skincare begins to play. This kind of semi-cheeky disclaimer continues to be a trend nowadays — The Great claims to be an “occasionally true” story, and Baby Reindeer warns that it’s a true story where “only the facts have been changed.” (Though it still landed in some legal trouble even with the caveat). We’ve always been obsessed with true stories, particularly in the horror space, from The Conjuring, which actually was based in reality, to The Blair Witch Project, which changed the marketing game forever when it claimed to be found footage. Usually, some creative liberties are taken to help the film’s flow, pacing, and clarity. These films aren’t documentaries, after all — you can’t pepper in talking-head interviews in order to provide context and motivation. Reading up about the actual events after watching the movie can enhance the experience, but it’s not required. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Skincare, which seems to adapt things so rigidly that the way it unfolds is practically incomprehensible unless you’re familiar with the true-crime story from which it pulls.

Skincare Famed esthetician Hope Goldman’s skincare business faces sabotage when rival Angel Vergara opens a boutique across the street. Aided by friend Jordan, Hope seeks to uncover who’s trying to ruin her reputation.Run Time 1 hr 37 min Director Austin Peters Release Date August 16, 2014 Actors Elizabeth Banks, Nathan Fillion, Lewis Pullman, Michaela Jaé (MJ) Rodriguez

What is ‘Skincare’ About?

Skincare starts with a flashforward, where we see a woman named Hope Goldman (Elizabeth Banks) fixing her makeup. Her mascara is smudged, and we hear police sirens in the background, so it’s clear she’s been through some stuff. Her focus through the chaos, however, remains on making sure she looks flawless. We understand why when we flashback to the beginning of the story — two weeks earlier in 2013 Los Angeles — when we learn that Hope is a popular Hollywood esthetician coming out with her own skincare line. Hope is getting her makeup done for a segment on a popular daytime interview show talking about her new products. Things seem to be going well, but we know that’s not going to last, considering we just got a peek into where she is a mere fortnight later.

Things start to go downhill fast. It all starts when Hope notices a new neon sign across the street from her. She goes over to greet the owner, who she discovers is named Angel (Luis Gerardo Méndez) — and is a fellow celebrity esthetician. They two are immediately at passive-aggressive odds, which only becomes more tense after Hope’s email is hacked, with an absurd and sexually explicit message being sent out to her entire client list. The email makes her something of a pariah, which causes her clients to start flocking to Angel and the news program to feature him instead.

The stakes only get higher from there, with the danger Hope is in escalating from public humiliation to physical harm. Hope becomes obsessed with proving that Angel is the one trying to ruin her, even getting her friend-slash-crush Jordan (Lewis Pullman) and mechanic Armen (Erik Palladino) involved to take him down once and for all — by whatever means necessary.

‘Skincare’s Characters Range from Nonsensical to Nonexistent

The main issue of Skincare is its lack of characterization — or at least the kind resembling anything interesting or consistent. We’re told that Hope is a survivor who has poured everything into her business, but we never get any real background on her to indicate what she’s survived or sacrificed in order to make her dreams come true. The script goes through the motions of making her feel on the verge of losing everything — her struggle to pay rent, for instance — but it’s presented in such a bland, cookie-cutter way that we never get any real sense of stakes or tension.

The script can’t decide if it wants to make Hope a delusional, manipulative girlboss or a helpless, airheaded damsel in distress, oscillating wildly between the two from scene to scene. One of the most baffling character choices involves a skeevy newscaster, Brett (Nathan Fillion), trying to bribe Hope into giving him a blowjob to put her segment back on the air. It’s disgusting, predictable, and exploitative all at once, but it seems ready to take an interesting turn when Hope reveals she’s been recording their entire conversation. But instead of letting this be a clever moment of Hope smartly one-upping this scumbag and blackmailing her way to the top, foreshadowing her own willingness to play dirty, she swears recording him was an accident and promptly deletes the audio. Um…huh? I’d say this is wildly out of character, but honestly, I have no idea what Hope’s character is supposed to be. The movie seems to want to tell us she’s fake, vain, and disingenuous, constantly bribing people with her products, but it has no clue who she is at her core under her perfectly done-up surface.

We can’t figure out who Hope is, not because she’s morally gray or full of complex contradictions, but because she doesn’t seem like a real person at all, never feeling rooted in reality whatsoever. This is a particularly damning problem to have because the entire film is filtered from her point of view and hinges on being immersed in her perspective. At times, it seems the film is attempting to go the unreliable narrator route, hinting that Hope is either paranoid or in on certain things, but it’s never made clear enough to make the device work.

The rest of the cast fares just as awful. Pullman does what he can with what he has and gives the best performance of the bunch, but his motives and past don’t make any sense. The script overexplains the most basic of plotlines, like Hope’s rent dilemma, but it doesn’t take any time to explain any of the more involved reveals. We see the twist Jordan is involved with coming from a mile away, but it doesn’t add up to anything logical. Despite being the catalyst for the entire movie, Angel gets hardly any screen time. Perhaps more egregious is the treatment of Michaela Jaé Rodriguez as Marie, who is criminally underused, wasted in a POC best friend trope role I had really hoped we were leaving in the early 2000s. She, in particular, deserves so, so much better than this.

‘Skincare’ Doesn’t Know What It Wants to Be
Image via IFC

Skincare can’t figure out if it wants to be an edgy crime thriller or a heightened satirical dark comedy, and the space it ultimately ends up occupying is puzzling at best and downright offensive at worst. Nearly every man Hope encounters comes onto her, and the attacks she faces are a buffet of various brands of sexual harassment, ranging from the blowjob scene to pornographic images with her face being spread around to someone posting that she’s looking for someone to come to her work and make her rape fantasy come true — which we see someone start to attempt.

Sexism and misogyny are subjects women, unfortunately, have to deal with every day, and it’s true that many police officers don’t take stalking and threats like this seriously. It’s just a shame that the film doesn’t seem to take it particularly seriously, either. It doesn’t dive into these topics in any meaningful way, which almost sends the message that Hope is overreacting by being upset about them. As is, they feel thrown in for cheap, edgy shock value.

The script is a disaster, starting off mediocre and devolving into an incoherent mess the longer it goes on, with performances that are merely passable. Considering what they were given to work with, you can’t ask for much better in this case. The strongest element of the film is its score, which occasionally gives it some sense of style and mood — even if, again, the film clearly doesn’t know what that mood is supposed to be. As far as cinematography goes, there are a few impressive shots here and there, though the visuals are nothing to write home about either.

Skincare is about an industry that uses smoke and mirrors to make you look like the younger, better version of yourself. Perhaps it’s fitting, then, that nothing about it feels real — not in the “stranger-than-fiction” way but in the “none of these characters feel like real human beings” one. The characters somehow behave both flatly and erratically, driving a cliché plot that manages to be both overly simplistic and confusing. Take care of your skin — and sanity — by sitting this one out.

REVIEW Skincare ‘Skincare’ can’t figure out whether it wants to be a crime thriller or a dark satire, making it a muddled mess.ProsThe score and cinematography occasionally give it some style. ConsThe characters range from one-dimensional cliches to erratic contradictions, with none of them feeling like real people.The combination of crime thriller and dark satire is executed poorly.The characters’ motivations are unclear, making for a confusing watch.

Skincare comes to theaters in the U.S. starting August 16. Click below for showtimes near you.

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