Angelina Jolie leads a group of female characters in writer-director Alice Winocur’s Couture, a broad and intimate fashion-set story of broken bodies and spirits. It feels like the actress is back to her roots for the first time in a long time.
In the film, which just screened at the Toronto International Film Festival, Jolie stars as Maxine, a horror director who takes a job in Paris directing a fashion art piece to be used in an upcoming runway collection, all while navigating divorce proceedings.
Upon arrival, she is upended by receiving a breast cancer diagnosis. Professionally and personally, Maxine’s convictions are constantly challenged by men–her ex-husband, her doctor (Vincent Lindon), and a coworker (Louis Garrel) with whom she begins a fumbling romantic tryst. And perhaps most crushingly, her daughter is growing distant.
The film also divides its perspective to several other women in the orbit of the launch of this collection. Ada (model Anyier Anei) once dreamed of entering pharmacy school but is beginning a modeling career to help support her family after they have fled war in Sudan.
She meets makeup artist Angéle (Raw’s older sister Ella Rumpf), who is using her fashion world experience as inspiration for a burgeoning writing career. Also among its ensemble are several models that Ada befriends and the couturière making Ada’s debut gown (Raw’s younger sister Garance Marillier, who doesn’t want a Raw reunion?!)
Couture’s women are all in isolation–they each spend significant screen time alone or unable to communicate what troubles them, receiving bad omens over the phone. Even when Ada connects with her new roommate models, she remains the newbie outsider. Angéle cares for others without anyone to care for her.
The fashion world setting is mostly coincidental for what the film’s characters are going through. Though its title suggests florid eye candy with images of elaborate gowns and fabrics and aspirational views of Paris, Winocur keeps Couture’s focus on the women who make the spectacle of this world happen. Behind the scenes, she suggests, is a real human struggle where fashion doesn’t provide the escapism that it does to the spectator–the job of an artist is a solitary one, even if you’re in the middle of a circus.
It’s not the most revelatory approach, but Winocur does assemble a batch of characters and performances that are never less than believably human. Couture’s defining trait isn’t anything to do with its plot mechanics, but moreso its deep compassion for its characters.
In a single hospital waiting room scene, French screen legend Aurore Clément shares a moving moment with Jolie’s Maxine, the two strangers connecting solely through their mutual shared experience. It provides a sustaining lifeline to Maxine and one of Jolie’s best scenes.
In its modesty, the film never quite rises to the Oscar-winning actress’s level. Considering Jolie is so emotionally exposed throughout, it is odd that the film doesn’t ask nearly as much of its other actresses, nor does it have as much curiosity for the inner life of the women they inhabit.
This disjointedness leaves the film’s impact rather stunted and Winocur stumbles to draw them together. When Angéle is the first person Maxine confides with about her diagnosis, it is solely Maxine’s moment, leaving Angéle without her own moment to share her artistic heartbreak with another character. Every character arc that isn’t Maxine’s feels incomplete, no matter how real these women feel.
However, the film’s best moments come from Maxine’s navigating of her cancer diagnosis opposite her responsibilities and initiating treatment on her own terms. Couture provides an emotionally honest depiction of that experience, one that familiar viewers will recognize and appreciate the care it is given. As is, the film appears to want to focus just on that journey but commits to presenting this tapestry of stories, ultimately coming off as at odds with itself.
With its other characters granted less satisfying closure to their stories, the film ultimately becomes a minor key showcase for Jolie. We’ve grown used to seeing the actress in more heightened efforts like genre fare such as Maleficent or last year’s high melodrama biopic Maria.
It’s been some time since audiences have seen her in a subdued, contemporary drama such as this, which gives a slight rush to her stretches of the film. Especially because the actress delivers a performance that is this compellingly naturalistic and achingly vulnerable.
It is clear that Couture is a deeply personal project for Jolie. Whether or not that significance helped translate this into her most grounded performance in several years, it is simply quite gratifying to have her back in this mode of performance.
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