Review: In ‘Skincare,’ cutthroat competition in the L.A. beauty industry leads to a face-plant

Director Austin Peters makes his narrative feature debut with “Skincare,” a slice of nasty L.A. noir set within the beauty industry, starring Elizabeth Banks as a celebrity aesthetician whose reputation crumbles around her over the course of two weeks. The film calls to mind other dark, salacious thrillers that satirize a city seemingly obsessed with image — think of “Nightcrawler” or even “American Gigolo” — and Peters wields the style and tone of this subgenre with skill.

The sunbaked Los Angeles of “Skincare” is not the glowing, golden fantasy that we often seen on screen, an impossibly beautiful escapist fantasy. No, the light in “Skincare” is harsh and revealing: bright UV rays, fluorescent bulbs and neon signs beating down on the face of Hope Goldman (Banks), a facialist with a high-profile client list who’s on the verge of breaking through to the big time with her own skincare line.

Hope has been desperate to keep up appearances with her product launch, taping a TV segment that she expects will catapult her into fame and fortune, but as we come to find out, her finances are in disarray. She’s behind on the rent for her storefront and spa in the iconically kitschy Crossroads of the World complex in Hollywood, and when a competing aesthetician, Angel (Luis Gerardo Méndez), sets up shop on her turf, an already frazzled Hope begins to unravel.

But Hope’s undoing isn’t entirely her fault: A mysterious stalker simultaneously starts to interfere with her reputation, sending creepy texts with videos of Hope attached, hacking her email and slashing her tires. Hope turns to her only allies, a group of lecherous men that includes a TV news anchor (Nathan Fillion), her mechanic (Erik Palladino) and a new friend, Jordan (Lewis Pullman), a young, amped-up life coach.

Elizabeth Banks and Lewis Pullman in the movie “Skincare.”

(IFC Films)

“Skincare” becomes a two-hander, alternating between the floundering Hope and the equally flailing Jordan, who desperately wants to be seen as a hero to her. Pullman is delightfully slimy as an unhinged delusional narcissist, high on his own supply of motivational word salad that he spews into his laptop camera. He’s a descendant of Tom Cruise’s “Magnolia” character Frank T.J. Mackey, but with all the wits of one of Michael Bay’s lunkheaded “Pain & Gain” crew.

Banks, on the other hand, brings a flinty mean streak to the striving Hope. Though she’s a victim here, she’s not entirely sympathetic and Banks tiptoes that fine line carefully. There’s a dash of schadenfreude here, since she cares more about what people think and how she looks than anything else. Her own assumptions and accusations add to the pile-up of miscommunication that lead to destruction in “Skincare.”

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Banks’ and Pullman’s deliveries of these tragicomic characters elevate what could have been merely a genre exercise into something more fascinating and satirical. The script, written by Peters with Sam Freilich and Deering Regan, is less interesting. The coincidences and twists fit together, but there’s no deeper reason why this story had to be set in the beauty industry except that it’s a business built on facade, fantasy and seeming frivolity. “Skincare” doesn’t dig into any of these themes in a significant way. There is also no discernible reason why this story is set in 2013, except that it makes it feel slightly dated and cheesy; the diegetic Maroon 5 and Katy Perry songs that weave throughout the movie give it an ironic humor and sense of time, but this film did not have to be a period piece.

Despite his screenplay’s limitations, Peters (like Hope) is a master of aesthetics and with cinematographer Christopher Ripley and editor Laura Zempel, he‘s crafted a compellingly sleazy ‘80s-style thriller — or at least a convincing facsimile of one. The story may be only skin-deep, but Banks and Pullman find something truthfully hopeless in these surface pleasures.”

Katie Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.