Any business can be anxiety-inducing, especially the ones that have a whole lot of people ready to rip you apart to make their place. Director Austin Peters’ “Skincare” stars Elizabeth Banks as Hope Goldman, a middle-aged woman trying to make a name for herself in the world of Hollywoodland’s ever-growing line of Beauty Products. However, right before the launch of her own line, a competitor arrives just next door, and out of nowhere, someone starts to jeopardize the name she has built for herself after years of straight-faced networking and star-gazed buttering up.
The tone that Peters uses for the movie is a mix of camp and corporate politics and the way fame and name work in a place like Hollywood. It works for a large part of the film, although it could have gone a little darker and more profound.
In the following article, we will examine Skincare, particularly its ending and it’s meaning for the viewer. Please be aware that the analysis will contain spoilers, so please proceed with caution.
Skincare (2024) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:
What is the movie ‘Skincare’ about?
The film centers around Hope Goldman, a famous aesthetician on the brink of launching her own skincare line. Hope is a woman who has worked tirelessly to build her reputation in Los Angeles, catering to a list of high-profile clients. Now that she is ready to launch her line of skincare products that she so vehemently keeps telling around as the best in the market made in a secret place in Italy (I doubt she is honest about this bit), we can clearly see that she is anxious about how things will pan out for her.
She has gone all guns blazing into her product; her studio is in one of the prime locations in Hollywood, and she has secured a segment on one of daily TV’s most important segments to promote her journey into one of the most sorted-out facialists in L.A. However, her career and life begin to unravel when a rival facialist, Angel Vergara (Luis Gerardo Méndez), opens a boutique directly across from hers. Hope feels threatened by the sudden appearance of a business that offers almost exactly the same thing as her. So she goes to Jeff (John Billingsley), her landlord, so that he throws him off the property. However, Jeff refuses, saying that it is Hope who should be worried about being thrown out. This allows us to understand that the facade that Hope is portraying has cracks inside them. She is not as well-rounded and composed as she describes.
Who is Angel?
Angel Vergara (Luis Gerardo Méndez) is Hope’s rival. He is a talented facialist who opens his boutique, Shimmer by Angel, right across from Hope’s shop. Angel appears to be a friendly and professional competitor who simply wants to do his job well and offer the best services to his clients. However, it’s obvious that his presence makes Hope feel threatened because her life’s work is on the line.
Slowly and eventually, Hope’s business starts to suffer, and she becomes increasingly paranoid, believing that Angel is sabotaging her reputation. The film spirals into a psychological thriller as Hope and her friend Jordan (Lewis Pullman), a self-proclaimed life coach, try to uncover who is behind the attacks on her life and business. The tension escalates as Hope’s paranoia leads her down a path of self-destruction, including stalking Angel right to his house and buying a gun because she feels someone is going to kill her.
What happens to Hope’s reputation before her segment on ‘The Brett & Kylie Show’ airs?
Before Hope’s segment on The Brett & Kylie Show airs, her reputation is already in jeopardy due to a series of increasingly severe incidents. These include hacking her email, where inappropriate content is sent to her clients, and damaging online ads created in her name.
Additionally, her car tires are slashed, which she suspects to be Angel’s doing. As these events accumulate, Hope’s credibility and image begin to deteriorate. She starts losing important clients, including some of her dedicated fans and friends, including Jessica (Ella Balinska) & Margaret (Medalion Rahimi) both of who prefer going to Angel’s instead of coming to Hope’s studio.
The media begins to turn against Hope, and her once-successful career is on the verge of collapse. The impending segment on The Brett & Kylie Show is supposed to be a significant boost for her skincare line, but with her reputation in tatters, Brett has it canceled, claiming to be the work of the network. He later tries to take advantage of Hope’s vulnerability by asking her for a blow-job in return for bringing her segment back on air. She goes away from the situation by claiming that she has recorded and deleted an audio clip of Brett asking her for that favor.
What does Hope do to fix her problem?
In her desperation to fix the increasingly chaotic situation, Hope enlists the help of her friend Jordan, who promises to take care of Angel for her. However, her attempts to regain control only lead to further complications. When her house is broken into (we later learn that it was one of Brett’s men who had been stalking Hope to check if she has actually deleted the audio clip), she becomes more paranoid, and she starts taking drastic measures, including confronting Angel and then asking Armen (her friend who seems to have a connection with the mafia and has a thing for her) help her fix the Angel problem forever.
Skincare (2024) Movie Ending Explained:
Who tried sabotaging Hope’s work, and why?
The true saboteur behind Hope’s problems is her friend Jordan. Although initially appearing to be on Hope’s side, Jordan is revealed to have been the one orchestrating the various attacks against her. His motivations are rooted in his own ambitions and perhaps jealousy, seeing an opportunity to manipulate the situation to his advantage. By sabotaging Hope’s work, he possibly intended to destabilize her position and possibly elevate his own status by making her vulnerable. From where I see it, he wanted Hope to become so dependent on him that she is forced to hire him as her life coach and possibly give him a part of her studio as a possible office space.
As mentioned above, when threatening Angel does not go as planned, and Hope’s house is attacked, Armen takes things into his own hands and directly goes into Angel’s house to threaten him by saying that he should leave Hope alone. However, things spiral out when Angel hits Armen over the head with a glass, and then Armen pouches on him and injures him badly. Later, Armen gets into an accident and dies.
Coming back, Jordan’s betrayal is a key twist in the film, as it shifts the narrative from a rivalry between Hope and Angel to a more personal and insidious attack from within her own circle. This revelation adds a layer of complexity to the story, highlighting the dark side of ambition.
Later, Hope pays Jordan a visit at the low-key motel he has been staying at to understand why he did what he did. She hits his face with a baseball bat and rushes away, ultimately realizing that she is cornered. The ending of Skincare sees Hope deciding to embrace her infamy. She dresses up in a glamorous outfit and makeup, preparing herself for the inevitable media frenzy as the police come to arrest her. Rather than resisting arrest, she turns her downfall into a spectacle, ensuring that her name stays in the public eye, even if it is associated with scandal.
Is ‘Skincare’ based on a true story?
While the film claims to be a fictional account, it also doubles down on it being inspired from a true story. From the eerie similarities, people were able to conclude that the Banks starring movie is based on Dawn DaLuise’s life. With the release of the movie, DaLuise’s life has resurfaced in the public eye, but the facialist has accused Banks and IFC Studios of drawing directly from her life experiences without her consent, potentially jeopardizing a deal she was negotiating for a Netflix documentary about her story. DaLuise expressed concerns that the film could undermine her ability to tell her own story on her terms.
Banks has since denied any prior knowledge of her story before singing up for Skincare in an interview with Entrainment Weekly with her focus being on exploring the cutthroat world of LA’s beauty industry. However, it is interesting to look deeper into the real-life story that seem to have inspired the movie.
Who Is Dawn DaLuise?
In the early 2010s, Dawn DaLuise was a highly sought-after facialist in Hollywood, with an A-list clientele that included stars like Sarah Michelle Gellar, Alicia Silverstone, and Jennifer Aniston. DaLuise was celebrated for her innovative skincare techniques, particularly her galvanic facials, which used small electrical currents to enhance the penetration of beauty products into the skin. Her business, Skin Refinery Salon in West Hollywood, was a success, and she had built a reputation as one of the top aestheticians in the industry.
However, DaLuise’s world, much like Hope’s in Skicare, began to unravel when a new aesthetician, Gabriel Suarez, opened his own boutique, Smooth Cheeks, in the same building as her salon. This new competition sparked a rivalry between the two skincare specialists, leading to a series of increasingly bizarre and alarming events.
What happened to Dawn DaLuise?
The rivalry between DaLuise and Suarez took a dark turn when DaLuise was arrested in March 2014. Authorities accused her of plotting to hire a hitman to kill Suarez, a claim that shocked the Hollywood beauty community. According to the police, DaLuise had sent text messages to her friend, Edward Feinstein, expressing her desire to have Suarez eliminated. These messages were used as evidence to charge her with solicitation of murder.
However, DaLuise claimed that she was the victim of harassment and that her actions were misinterpreted. She alleged that after Suarez opened his boutique, she became the target of a campaign to ruin her business. She reported incidents such as her tires being slashed and a Craigslist ad being posted soliciting men for free sex services at her address. Despite these claims, the police focused on the text messages she sent to Feinstein, which they believed showed her intent to have Suarez killed.
It was later revealed that Feinstein, along with Nichola Prugo, a member of the infamous Bling Ring, had been involved in stalking and harassing DaLuise and her two daughters. Despite the intense legal battle and the allegations, DaLuise was ultimately found not guilty of the solicitation of murder and solicitation of assault charges after serving around ten months in jail.
Where is DaLuise now?
The aftermath of the trial was a difficult period for DaLuise. In 2015, she was diagnosed with colorectal cancer, a condition she claimed was exacerbated by the neglect she experienced while incarcerated. She filed a lawsuit against Los Angeles County, alleging that her medical complaints were ignored and that the delay in treatment allowed her cancer to advance.
Despite these challenges, DaLuise attempted to rebuild her life and career. In 2018, she opened a new skincare boutique, where she ironically called one of her treatments the “Killer Facial,” a nod to the media’s portrayal of her during the trial—the treatment, involving a galvanic mask reminiscent of the infamous Hannibal Lecter mask.
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