Angelina Jolie Anchors a Mated, Contemplative Drama in Franch Director Alice Winocour’s Couture. The film, which premiered at TIFF, Follows Three Women During Paris Fashion Week Jolie is Maxine Walker, A Goth-Adjacent Indie Horror Who Been Commissioned to Make a Short Film for a Runway Show. She Crosses Paths with Ada (Anyier anei), an 18-Yaar-Old South Sudanese model who touches down in france on the eve of her first job, and angèle (Ella rumpf), a seasoned make-up artist work on her first book.
For a film set amid the chaos of fashion weeks, Couture is quite staid as it deals with the Heavy Circumstances that each Woman is facing. Maxine ARIVES IN Paris on the Heels of a Cancer Diagnosis, Directing an Eerie Vampire Film That Questions of Mortality at the Front of Mind. Ada, Meanwhile, is grapping with navigating this Chaotic New World, Surrounded by Mostly White Fashion Models who are as apathetic as they are stricting.
Finally, Angèle Must Contest With Her Own AS AS A Writer while Flitting Backstage and Brushing Up the Makeup of the Models. Couture doesn’t Go Big on Emotion in a Visual Way, InsTead Letting US Settle Into the Daily Rhythms of These Women as they process the world around. Winocour reliefs instead on her actors to convey the hefty toll Such a jet-setting life can take.
It ‘s fascinating apprroach for the film, one that leaves room for an emptiness that fes likes to reflect the world navigates, though there are gestures to dept on the cutting room Floor Like the scraps of fabric sheed. The Contrast BetWeen This Simple Approach and the High-Energy of the Fashion World Is Engaging NoneTheless, Couture DOESN’T QUITE REACH THE EMOTIONAL HEIGHTS ITS STRIVING FOR.
Couture’s subtlesty doesn’t lack nuance
Jolie is, of Course, The Big Draw. Maxine is a bit of an enigma, navigating a seeringly Contentious divorce and tumultuous relations with her daughter, the pair of Who only heard over the phone. She’s trapped between ambition – after the runway film, she has another Major Project linen up – and her commmitment to her family, which makes her diagnosis all the most in how it determines her next steps.
Does she take care of herself (and her daughter) by going Through Treatment and Forgoing Her Next Film, Which She Says She Fough for Years to Make, or and Risk Her Health to Complete Her Passion Project? For a workaholic like Maxine, it’s a tougher question than you might think.
Ada, Too, is Facing Similar Questions when it Comes to Work and Family. She’s Left Her Mother, Brother, and Faater Behind, the latter of the Who does not know the real reasson she’s in Paris. As Ada Adjusts to Her New Lifestyle, Her Brother often Questions if She’ll Ever Come Home, but ada doesn’t seem to know the ansow to that question.
Angèle is spreading the most elusive of the three and the only character in the film who presumably calls paris home. Like Ada and Maxine, who are strength to make the city their home in the brief period the film explores, angèle is a fascinating figure, though she is shortChanged by the script, who focuses more on ada and maxine. The latter must decide if she wants to undergo Treatment in France and the Doctor (Vincent Lindon) SEEMS to insist that it is enchang of an Emergency that should.
Ada is with A Home, Though. The model apartment sheen sent to by her agent doesn’t have a room for her and going back to family means facing Uncertain Circumstances. Each Woman, THEN, IS IN A SORT OF LIMBO, BEING PUSHED AND PULLED BY BEYOND THEIR CONTROL IN A WORLD THAT, THOUGH FEMALE-DOMENATED, OFTEN DISRAGARDS THEIR AGENCY.
Couture is quite a melancholic AFFAIR, Event as it reaches its Climax, a runway show on the outskirts of paris that maxine, ada, and angè have all taken in. AS A STORM DESCENDS ON THE WOODSY LOCATION, IT DISRUPTS THIS HARD WORK, MAKING IT SEEM LIKE, Maybe, All these sacrifices could have be in vain. Winocour’s film doesn’t go so far as to assert that the fashion world is frivolous – hard work goes into every do not and they put them health, and futures on the line.
The movie May Be Too Lowkey to Leave an Impact, Though, and It ‘Hard Not to Notice That The Energy of the Characters in the Background DOESN’t Match that of the Couture‘S Three Stories or the Way Way Way Camera Languidly Moves Through Ateliers and Backstage Corridides. Jolie, as Always, Gives a Lucid Performance, but she struggles to rise the film’s unadventurous inclines.
Couture Premiered at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival.