Hollywood Beauty in 'Skincare' with Elizabeth Banks

In the world of Hollywood, where beauty reigns supreme and perfection is relentlessly pursued, Austin Peters' impressive debut feature, Skincare, casts an unfiltered light on the darker side of the Hollywood beauty industry. The film offers a gritty exploration of rivalry, obsession, and the fine line between fame and infamy.

Starring Elizabeth Banks as Hope Goldman, a renowned Los Angeles aesthetician on the cusp of launching her own skincare line, Skincare is set against the backdrop of 2013 Hollywood. Hope is a character inspired by the very real pressures of maintaining relevance in an ever-changing industry. She finds herself entangled in a web of paranoia when a new competitor, Angel Vergara (played by Luis Gerardo Méndez), opens a boutique across from her own. The stage for this unraveling drama is the Crossroads of the World, a Hollywood landmark with its own insidious past.

Cinematographer Christopher Ripley meticulously recreates the look and feel of 2013 Hollywood with raw accuracy. His use of orange-tinged sodium-vapor streetlights, phased out in recent years, bathes the film in a nostalgic yet sinister light, amplifying the tension that simmers beneath the surface. As Hope's life begins to unravel, Skincare delves into the psychological toll of living in a world where appearance is everything, drawing subtle parallels to real-life events like the infamous feud between Hollywood facialists Dawn DaLuise and Gabriel Suarez.

In a culture that prizes beauty above all else, where the drive to stay on top can lead to self-destruction, Elizabeth Banks portrays Hope as a woman teetering on the edge, determined to reclaim control of her life by any means necessary. The film’s climax, where Hope prepares for her arrest with a full face of makeup and meticulously brushed eyebrows, is a powerful commentary on the lengths people will go to maintain their image in Hollywood, where everyone is always watching.

Peters crafts a tale that is as much about the characters as it is about the city of Los Angeles itself, a place where dreams are made and shattered, often in the same week. It’s a world where the pursuit of success can be as deadly as it is alluring, and where the true horror lies not in the supernatural, but in the everyday obsessions that drive people to the brink. In the end, Skincare mirrors the darker side of a society obsessed with success, where the only thing more dangerous than the competition is the person staring back at you in the mirror.

Skincare was shot in just 18 days in the heart of Los Angeles, we watched it at AMC in Hollywood, with long lines and crowds - a testament to the city's respect for cinema and the communal experience of watching films in their most immersive form, in theatres now presented by IFC.