I don’t need much convincing to watch a movie that has Angelina Jolie in it, especially the Jolie of today. Her presence on and off the screen holds an exquisitely rare torch to the line of quintessential icons, and it only seems to further deepen by how she chooses her projects. Is it so far-fetched that movies like Kung Fu Panda or Eternals have an anthropomorphic or extraterrestrial reflection to Jolie’s life? Honestly, no – just look at Tigress’s facial structure! Jolie has led a life of public discourse enough for several lifetimes, so much that it’s hard to untangle the concept that every Jolie movie character is somehow Jolie in another universe.
Her latest role in Alice Winocour’s Couture is no exception. It is far from the grand gesticulation toward iconography and stature that Pablo Larraín’s Maria squarely was, but it resonates with one of Jolie’s most personal issues, reverberated with a profound impact on the world. Jolie is Maxine, a low-budget horror film director who is hired by a fashion house to shoot a short film as an introduction to their runway show. She travels to Paris, to the dismay of her teenage daughter, who seems resigned to long-distance conversations with Maxine, and her doctor, who has urgent news about her ultrasound.
The obvious connection between Jolie and Maxine is the character’s diagnosis of breast cancer, something that Jolie had courageously advocated screening for (and personally, there are few more famous genetic testings than the BRCA one). However, it would do Couture a huge disservice to limit the story as a real-life parallel. Winocour, who had helped write Mustang, one of the most moving portrayals of sisterhood on film, recreates the magic of feminine connection within this fashion show. As Maxine juggles appointments with on-set directorial duties, two other stories are weaved in: Ada (Anyier Anei), a South Sudanese pharmacy student who was just cast to open the show and Angèle (Ella Rumpf), a makeup artist who is quick with mending costume tears and model anxieties.
Despite how it’s presented, Couture has a remarkable levity crafted by Winocour just being a girl’s girl. This is not through the pursuit of unconditional support, but rather writing about the familiar apprehension and yearning that women have when they first perceive each other, and the vulnerability once they open up. Here, inebriated models are fun and not mean (one piece of advice shared with Ada: “[Walk like] you’re not sure what you’re doing, but you’re hot”), and stage crew don’t denigrate others’ efforts (at least, if they don’t deserve it). Jolie’s presence would seem intimidating in a small film like this; instead, her role guides her to the backseat, much like how her own character learns to cooperate with succumbing to a new stage in her life.
Even though the film takes place in the busiest part of the fashion show planning, there is a familiar European malaise within the grind, like if Personal Shopper drank some coffee but felt even more tired afterward. I could imagine people walking away from this film thinking that stuff happened, but I’m always enchanted by the catharsis of connection, even if that happens through the little cracks in the day. One of the best scenes, in which Maxine and her assistant director Anton (Louis Garrel) discuss the brightness of the fake red blood on a slasher film they watch together in her hotel bed, represents the kind of peaceful acceptance within the approaching storm.
I take quiet films to heart, especially ones that ask you to take a chance on women that aren’t written to please. Though outside her usual realm of fictional worlds, Winocour displays a tender respect toward the industry. This is the first fictional movie that was able to film inside Chanel’s Paris ballroom and atelier, and all I could imagine was how important Winocour thought it was to get the movements and voices right without a Wintour-style exaggeration. I can concede that it is a movie that stuff just happens without a complete resolution, but it’s because its ending is a beginning — even for Jolie.
Couture
2025
dir. Alice Winocour
106 min.
Opens Friday, 6/26 @ AMC Boston Common
