After lending her directing talents to the outrageous almost-true story, Cocaine Bear, Elizabeth Banks has followed the film up with another stranger than fiction story. But is her newest feature ripped from the headlines like her last venture?
That’s the main question on everyone’s mind when looking at initial promotional material for Skincare. In this crime thriller, Banks stars as Hope Goldman, an L.A. aesthetician who plans to release a new skincare line. However, her desires to achieve her American Dream are dashed when a competitor opens up a storefront next to hers. What follows is a shocking and wild tale as Hope becomes the victim of an aggressive harassment campaign. She immediately suspects her rival, Angel Vergara (Luis Gerardo Méndez). But as she attempts to put a stop to the vicious harassment, her life quickly spins out of control.
A nod to the L.A. noir films of the past, Skincare could easily just be a work of fiction, but as outrageous as the content is, it has roots in a real-life case. A fact that Banks told Entertainment Weekly she wasn’t aware of at first.
“I didn’t know it at all. I had never heard about it. I was just all in on Hope Goldman and this character and the sort of milieu of LA.”
Only after agreeing to be part of the project, did Banks learn her character was based on another Southern California facialist, Dawn DeLuise. Almost a decade previous DeLuise was wrapped in a nightmare of her own. Per Los Angeles Magazine, DeLuise was an aesthetician who also had friction with a rival who had moved in next door. At the same time, she was receiving harassment from men answering ads purportedly from DeLuise, soliciting sex.
These factors led the aesthetician to believe her competitor, Gabriel Suarez, was trying to edge her out of her business, only to learn it was an elaborate campaign from someone closer to home. After sending a few texts which were alleged jokes about hiring someone to murder Suarez, she was arrested despite going to the police several times to report her stalking.
Skincare changes many of these facts, but the meat of the story is relatively the same. At the end of the day, the film is about the lengths that people will go to get what they want. Viewers can catch Skincare, currently showing in theaters.