Skincare (2024)

Skincare-(2024)
Skincare (2024)

Hope Goldman seems an ideal name which is made up of two beautiful and heavy sounding words Hope and Goldman that are brightened with shining aspirational vibes. Such a name is always expected to be shared to everybody. Who wouldn’t want someone named Hope to bring that into their lives; it is something that is possible and is without a return. However, in the latest Nifty and slick directed video Skincare by Austin Peters, a famous music director, Hope is the name of a fast-moving aesthetician in Hollywood and is played by Elizabeth Banks. And she’s the face of her skin care line’s sleek packaging that is soon launching along with many products that promise hope for the future as a whole. Preservation of youth may be a reasonable expectation from them. Moreover, if used often they may even help find the fountain of youth. Only time will tell.

One of the lessons if we can call it that which LA based movies who have a history of brilliance over the past hundred years; everyone in the City of Dreams desires something big. And so does Hope, after establishing a solid reputation among the clientele in the world of beauty and wellness in a city of countless bare bellied trekkers and wannabe actresses.

As she prepares for her major launch, she has a lack of funds (still, it is hard to understand why she likes giving away those big-size product samples), problems with her landlord, and she gets more and more scared of that brand new beauty salon which has popped up directly opposite her shop. Angel Vergara, who owns the other beauty salon across from her store, appears nice at first (a quite nice spirited character played by Gerardo Méndez). But what is he doing stealing her customers and her parking spaces and claiming that he offers something even more amazing where not just the signs of aging are to be fought but almost eliminated through the application of his products?

Little by little, writer-director Peters (together with co-writers Sam Freilich and Deering Regan) turn the brightness of Hope’s noirish aspirations. Once Hope one day receives an unsolicited text message from somewhere (a video with her being observed from the distance), you would think that we are headed towards something more dreadfully quiet, Say Michael Haneke’s Cache, a slow burning yet unerring paranoid thriller. But Peters tells me, he had something else in mind. This lighter psychological caper located in the City of Los Angeles jerks into life and proves its creator is a sheath of how the elegant city filmmakers from Sunset Boulevard to Mulholland Drive have’ seen,’ chopped up and absorbed the works of film titans from La La Land.

Projection is one thing, the current batch of Z’s x Peters “Skincare,” fun as it is, has no illusions about its standing among the evergreen legends. But Peters is nevertheless here to cheer up all cinema lovers and moviegoers regardless if you are a fellow jaded fan of the sprawling, glittering film metropolis he knows too well, or one with the knowledge that stories of bungling counter criminals (“Fargo” comes to mind) will always lead to something messy and interesting.

Peters does an exceptional job of amalgamating various elements that complete Los Angeles, the good and the bad, often so awful that even dreams can be crushed. If “Skincare” has many spaces with a broad view, it also has rigid localities. For every unbearably cheerful day, there has to be a day when the weather is gloomy and gray, a place with a high window to enhance the already dismal mood. And for every millionaires’ clean corner, there are those few corners which stand untouched with all the rough edges.

As a determined entrepreneur who has worked hard to earn good things for herself and her ambitious aide Marine (MJ Rodriguez), Hope is working to stay away from the ios in that scenario. But attempts to help her are foiled due to constant disputes with her constant obnoxious life coach Jordan (an amusing Lewis Pullman) and her smitten mechanic when her email website, and client list are hacked, leading to a scenario in which sexual images and ads of her likeness are made, and spam is sent out from Hope’s account. Is it Angel who is responsible for all this, or are there other forces working to bring Hope down?

The answer is not very difficult to unravel however that suspense is not the main goal of the ‘Skincare’ however. The film does very well in addressing issues of how societies which place too much emphasis on youth seek to destabilise an older woman who is very successful in her profession (that ‘Sunset Boulevard’ line again) and don’t allow for the fact that there will be parasites who will always be ready to profit from the devastation of firmistic.

The cinematography of the film is without doubt impressive but Banks is not shy in venturing into the nooks and crannies of Hope who can never do enough wrong and is assisted in that undertaking by the unfriendly city environment which doesn’t brush off anyone who is left standing without scratches. In that, Skincare is a practice that is worth perfecting as illustrative of the strategy of the film.

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