Plot: Maxine is an American filmmaker who arrives in Paris during the frenzy of Fashion Week. Drawn into a love story with a familiar collaborator as her path intersects with women of different ages and cultural backgrounds – all fighting to take control of their own destinies – Maxine finds herself on a deeply personal journey of self-discovery that forces her to confront the choices shaping her life.
Review: Despite fewer films in the last decade, Angelina Jolie still commands the screen each and every time she is in a new film. From mainstream projects like Those Who Wish Me Dead and Eternals to the critically acclaimed biopic Maria, Jolie continues to show her talents as a performer and filmmaker. Her latest film, Couture, is a smaller film set within the world of high fashion during Paris Fashion Week, but from a very distinct vantage compared to films like The Devil Wears Prada. Boasting multiple narratives following women from different backgrounds, Couture has some interesting ideas to play with, but fails to pull them together into a cohesive narrative. Director Alice Winocour has a distinct eye and a stellar performance from Angelina Jolie, but Couture does not come together the way that it should.
Set during Paris Fashion Week, the film opens with the arrival of American filmmaker Maxine Walker (Angelina Jolie), who has accepted the role of directing a show. Known for her horror movies, Maxine is a recently divorced mother of a teenage daughter, Eden, and is struggling with the distance from her. Planning a vampire-themed film for the fashion show, Maxine receives news from her doctor that recent tests have found she has breast cancer and must be treated right away. While Maxine contends with her diagnosis, we also follow Ada (Anyier Anei), the Sudanese model she hand-selected to front the show, as well as make-up artists Angele (Ella Rumpf) and seamstress Christine (Garance Marillier). Showing each of these individual roles within the fast-paced, intense world of fashion design could have made for an intriguing premise, but Couture fails to make any of the stories worthwhile beyond Maxine’s journey.
Of the plotlines, only Maxine’s receives a full or even satisfying arc. Anier Anei plays Ada as a rookie runway model who left her home in South Sudan without telling her father. She struggles to fit in with her fellow models, but we never really see what comes of it. The film shifts among different plotlines connected by the characters’ interactions, and Ada shifts to Angele, who fixes her makeup. Ella Rumpf plays Angele, an aspiring author who struggles with criticism of her manuscript, while we get fleeting moments with Christine, played by Garance Marillier, who is delivering the main outfit for the show in her first project at such a high level of responsibility. For the film’s entirety, we spend maybe half an hour with these secondary characters, with Ada the only one who gets much detail about her journey, and yet it still feels like filler compared to the main story following Angelina Jolie’s character.
Jolie, who herself is a cancer survivor, lends a raw and emotionally powerful realism to Maxine’s diagnosis. Stuck away from her daughter in another country, Maxine must begin treatment and hear her options while also weighing what this means for her future. Maxine gets closer to her colleague and fellow filmmaker Anton (Louis Garrel), but Angelina Jolie completely astounds as she wears the torment and weight of her cancer outlook on her face in each scene. While Jolie switches naturally between French and English, there is little else in her performance that is not just natural and effortless. From walking around in a daze after the doctor’s news to stripping down to be marked up for testing, Jolie embraces every aspect of the cancer journey, and it is clear she brought her own experience to the performance. This is Jolie at her best and most naked, in every sense of that word.
Alice Winocour wrote and directed Couture, only her second film to feature English dialogue. Winocour experiments with the idea of fashion and the world of models and creative talent, but the film does not delve deeply into the industry. There are a few moments that show some of the show’s technical aspects coming together, as well as the models practicing their runway walks, but the rest focuses more on the emotional aspect of the women in each narrative thread. As the first fictional film shot inside Chanel’s showroom and atelier in Paris, I was hoping there would be more about the fashion world woven into the story, but it ends up being a wasted opportunity to explore it more deeply. Winocour certainly had aspirations to create a documentary feel in the realistic stories about the women, but only Jolie’s role feels like it reaches any sort of balance from start to finish.
Couture does not generate much energy or momentum, instead anchored by a languid and almost muted pacing. Alice Winocour lends the film a blend of documentary and dreamlike qualities while keeping the reality of a cancer diagnosis both respectful and blunt, something we don’t tend to see in fictional films. Couture could have been a more powerful portrait of the supporting characters had they gotten a bit more screen time, but as it stands, this movie feels a little unbalanced among its multiple focuses. Angelina Jolie is the reason to see this movie, as she gives a phenomenal performance that deserves recognition at the end of the year. Overall, the ambition of Couture overwhelms the final product, which is just not strong enough despite a valiant effort from all involved.
Couture opens in theaters on June 26th.
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