SKINCARE is a film that doesn't know what it wants to be. Its star, Elizabeth Banks (CALL JANE), is playing it straight as an aesthetician being driven out of business by a stalker/corporate saboteur. But Lewis Pullman is playing it like he's in a spoof or a social satire as her wannabe boyfriend slash life coach. Meanwhile the needle drops and lighting make it feel like the film wants to be a sleazy 80s thriller. None of it hangs together.
Instead what we get is a frustrating film about someone we are meant to believe is a hustler businesswoman but who relies on men to get her out of difficulty. Whether it's a newscaster who can give her promotional airtime on his channel (Nathan Fillion) or a local mechanic who can fix her slashed tires or the aforementioned life coach, our heroine responds to societal misogyny by being a helpless damsel in distress. And don't get me started on Pose's MJ Rodriguez, criminally wasted in the faithful friend sidekick role.
It's the kind of film with uninteresting female characters that one can only imagine being written by three men with little screenwriting experience. And so it comes as no surprise to discover that this is Austin Peters' fiction feature directorial debut based on a script co-written with debut feature screenwriters Sam Freilich and Derring Regan.
I am not sure what this film is doing in the festival. It's very weak.
SKINCARE has a running time of 96 minutes and is rated R. It was released in the USA in August and will play the BFI London Film Festival 2024.
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