How Elizabeth Banks Thriller ‘Skincare’ Turns a Real Life Murder-for-Hire Plot Into a Twisted L.A. Noir About the American Dream

The germ of the idea for the crime thriller “Skincare” came from a stranger-than-fiction criminal case: A Los Angeles-based aesthetician to the stars was accused of plotting the murder of a rival skincare expert. Yet director and co-writer Austin Peters wasn’t interested in creating a work of journalism or a documentary. Instead, he considered it the perfect jumping-off point for a Southern California Gothic tale.

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“It’s inspired by lots of movies and books in this sunshine noir world of Los Angeles,” Peters, who wrote the film with Sam Freilich and Deering Regan, says. “We never set out to tell the true story — that was never our intention. The thing that called to us about the story is that it sounded like a James M. Cain-style noir. It felt new and true to the Los Angeles I know, the world I know.”

Although “Skincare” is Peters’ debut feature, he had a partner in crime with the film’s lead, Elizabeth Banks. She portrays Hope Goldman, whose life is upended when a buzzier skincare expert named Angel (Luis Gerardo Méndez) opens a clinic across the street and starts attracting her celebrity clients. The role of Hope is complex, blending moments of humor, fear and ambition as she interacts with increasingly shady characters from L.A.’s underbelly as her business takes a hit. Given Banks’ experience in front of and behind the camera, Peters says she dove headfirst into the project.

“She an ideal partner and incredibly supportive of me, the film, and my vision for it, while also bringing so much to it,” he says. “She brought this character to life and was always there to support me with any sort of questions I might have. It was an ongoing collaboration, and in our rehearsal beforehand, which we had a very small amount of, but also on the day, I couldn’t ask for a better partner as a director. As someone to direct, she just brought it, and she worked every single day. We shot for 18 days and she worked every day from morning to night.”

Peters’ background filming music videos — working with artists like Diplo, Haim and Orville Peck — inspired his kinetic directing style, which is a fitting match to Banks’ dynamic performance. Pulsing music plays an important part in many of the film’s key scenes, from an opening that juxtaposes Hope’s glamorous world with a fiery Queens of the Stone Age track, to a surreal, coked-out dance to Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream.”

“The role of music in the film is something that happens early on,” he says. “One of the first things that happens is I start to hear it and and think about what that will sound like, what the sonic world is.”

The visual aesthetic of “Skincare” was largely dictated by the time period. While 2013 isn’t too far in the distant past, Peters took pains to work with production designer Liz Toonkel to ensure the differences in style and trends were felt without feeling cartoonish.

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“Elizabeth is dressed out of fashion,” he says. “She’s doing a trend that has long passed. This character cares very much about how they present themselves to the world, and we decided the way that she was going to dress was going to tell a big part of her story. It started with making a closet and pulling tons of Architectural Digests from that time. We looked at what the style was then, and it’s sort of shocking because it’s recent but feels so far out of style compared to what trending now.”

That disconnect in style also helped Peters and his DP, Christopher Ripley, imagine a unique visual language for the camera.

“It’s a challenge to shoot a film with a bunch of characters that I don’t share the aesthetic of,” Peters says. “It’s not something that immediately strikes me as a world that’s visually pleasing the way that certain worlds are. So we talked for a long time about, ‘How do we shoot in these spaces that don’t necessarily agree with our aesthetic or sensibilities, but still make it feel like this movie? So that it communicates to the audience what kind of movie it is?'”

According to Peters, “Skincare” is the kind of movie that meditates on “The image of success and how far one is willing to go to save their own skin and their outward appearance.” While those are universal themes, the colorful characters that inhabit Hope’s world are uniquely L.A.

“This is a city that people come to from all over the world, and it’s so big and sprawling and diverse,” Peters says. “There are so many different stories that are stacked up on each other. Simultaneously, it’s also so isolating. It’s the only city where you can be surrounded by people all the time — all these different walks of life — and feel completely alone. That’s something that’s going on with a lot of characters here, and we tried to show many sides of this world and these characters: The shiny, sunny exterior and the seedy underbelly.”

Watch the “Skincare” trailer below.

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