Elizabeth Banks in the story of an obsessed beautician

At the start Skin careAustin Peters’ rather clever feature film debut, Hope Goldman is unchallenged. The Los Angeles-based esthetician, played by Elizabeth Banks, is just about to launch her line of moisturizers, cleansers and serums, made in Italy. Hope is an old-school esthetician who, after 20 years of peeling Hollywood’s most expensive faces, is now ready to let regular folks in on the secret. There’s just one problem: A new spa has opened across the street and its owner, Angel Vergara (Luis Gerardo Méndez), seems ready to take over, sparking a fierce rivalry.

Skin care is, according to an early title card, a fictional story based on true events. It bears some similarities to the one-sided feud between West Hollywood beauticians Dawn DaLuise and Gabriel Suarez. About a decade ago, DaLuise served time in prison for allegedly trying to provoke Suarez’s murder. (A jury eventually acquitted her.) The details of the true case remain a tangled web of accusations, hearsay and gossip: DaLuise insists to this day that she was framed by two stalkers. Skin carewritten by Peters, Sam Freilich, and Deering Regan, pulls together the threads of this twisted history to weave a snappy and mildly entertaining tale of fame, prestige, and the obsession with holding on to both.

The film is set in 2013, just before social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok stretched some users’ 15 minutes of fame into endless hours. That era had a desperate energy that’s well captured here by DP Christopher Ripley’s gritty and undersaturated aesthetic. A generous use of close-ups—particularly of Hope’s eyes, which are blackened with dark eyeliner—creates a claustrophobic atmosphere, and the harps in composer Fatima Al Qadiri’s (Atlantic, in search of Mavis Beacon) gives the film a haunting ghostliness. Eager to exploit the internet and intoxicated by the promises of hustle culture, people blurred the distance between private and public selves in this decade of ambition. Hope sums up the mood of the period in her television interview: “I don’t see my life, who I am, as separate from my work,” she says. Angel’s arrival poses a threat not only to Hope’s business, but also to her self-esteem.

Finding the true hope determines Goldman’s Skin carethat follows her through the stages of her obsession. When strange things start happening to her – a hacker breaks into her mailing list and sends lewd messages to her clients; someone slashes her tires – Hope becomes convinced that Angel is sabotaging her. A chance encounter with Jordan (a great Lewis Pullman), a life coach of many talents, leads to an unlikely partnership as the two try to fend off the damaging attacks on Hope’s business and get her life back on track.

Peters takes care of the moving parts of Skin care efficient. The film rarely stumbles on its driving rhythm. Characters are introduced and their backstories cleverly told. As Hope’s fixation on Angel grows, it’s hard to shake the feeling of impending trouble. So it’s a shame when Skin care relaxes and loses its tension. The focus on leading us from one scene to the next robs the audience of the opportunity to immerse themselves in the world of the aestheticians – to understand the rules that govern this merciless business. Skin care shares an atmosphere and niche specificity with Medusa Deluxe, Thomas Hardiman’s thrilling crime thriller about the universe of hairdressing competitions. In this film, however, Hardiman plunged viewers into a tense and encrypted ecosystem and, in addition to solving a murder, also investigated the unspoken rules of beauticians.

More curiosity here could have given insights into other characters as well. Sure, it’s Hope’s world, but what about Angel, whose salon offers a coveted anti-aging technology? Or Hope’s assistant and PR manager Marine (an underemployed Michaela Jaé Rodriguez), who reminds Hope at one point how much her life depends on the success of this company? More attention to her could have Skin care to examine Hollywood’s obsession with youth (and bring the film into conversation with Coralie Fargeat’s Cannes sensation The substance) and the tensions between generations, between old-school aestheticians and newer ones. The potential to explore these peculiarities was already there in Peters’ story; it just needed to be expanded upon a little.