Lofty dreams come undone like a tattered garment in the face of harsh reality in Alice Winocour’s Paris Fashion Week drama, Couture. Angelina Jolie, in a rare lead role these days, stars in a film that follows the parallel stories of three women converging in the same place for the prestigious event. While Ella Rumpf and Anyier Anei fill out the other prominent lead roles, it’s Jolie who is clearly the focus and gets the bulk of the attention in a story that bears striking similarities to her own. Taken on that personal level, the film as at its most compelling, but it’s hard to ignore how threadbare and underwhelming the connections between these women are.
Jolie stars as Maxine Walker, an indie director who gets the opportunity of a lifetime, creating a high-profile ad for a prominent fashion house as part of its Fashion Week presentation. Newcomer Anei makes an immediate impresson as Ada, in a role that must be like playing a version of herself. The Sudanese model plays a woman plucked from obscurity in her home country, to work with more experienced models on the same show that Maxine is connected to. And then there’s Rumpf as Angèle, a makeup artist who has a more creative side as a writer that she’d much rather explore.
All three women have something else they’d much rather be doing, and Couture is about how they navigate aspirations, opportunity, and the unexpected obstacles that life throws in the way. As such, the tone is downbeat and somber, as these women all find themselves unfulfilled in one way or another. Ada, who had studied to be a pharmacist before her beauty caught the attention of talent scouts, finds that living the life of a supermodel isn’t all its cracked up to be. Angèle discovers that there really isn’t much demand for her meta memoir about the rigors of the fashion industry, which is weird because, yeah, they really do want those things in France so it just doesn’t ring true.
It’s clear that Jolie’s Max is who Winocour is really interested in, and Couture sometimes feels like it provided the two other storylines just to pad out the runtime. Max’s story must’ve felt like deja vu for Jolie. She also faces marital discord that disrupts her professional and personal well-being. Meanwhile, a breast cancer diagnosis and the need for immediate treatment has Max deciding between her passion and her health. It’s an unfair choice for anyone to make, especially for a horror filmmaker given the opportunity of her career. Jolie’s own battles with breast cancer are well-known, and undoubtedly informed her strikingly vulnerable, honest performance.
When Jolie isn’t on screen, Couture just doesn’t carry the same emotional weight. It’s not a knock on the other actresses so much as it is on the screenplay, which is surface level and gives them little to work with. Anei is a raw talent with an undeniable presence, but she’s still figuring out how to be expressive in a natural way, and that’s something which will come with more experience. Similar to The Devil Wears Prada 2, the Fashion Week spectacle is a visual delight, with glamorous garments highlighting the work of women as models and designers. Couture can’t do narratively what it does visually, and only Jolie manages to keep it from completely coming apart at the seams.
Vertical releases Couture in theaters on June 26th.
