Couture ★★½

Set during Paris Fashion Week, director Alice Winocour’s Couture follows four women who work behind-the-scenes and in front of the camera to make the event possible. Through these four women – film director Maxine (Angelina Jolie), make-up artist Angèle (Ella Rumpf), designer Christine (Garance Marillier), and model Ada (Anyier Anai) – Couture takes an unflinching look at how Fashion Week comes together, but Couture is about so much more than the show and the high-fashion industry. This is a story about these four women, about their bodies and minds in turmoil and their fight for their individuality, vision, and future. These four very disparate stories find them brought together with Maxine directing the opening film for the week, which stars modeling newcomer Ada, who will be wearing a dress designed by Christine and has her make-up done by Angèle.

In reflecting upon Couture, a few particular scenes stand out. Angèle is an aspiring writer, but with the demands of her make-up artist job, she is running all over Paris. Her bosses are demanding and her tasks endless. However, she has written something and manages to find a few moments to take a call offering her feedback on her work. Her work is about a make-up artist and the people she encounters. The man offering her feedback disregards the stories as “unbelievable” and though Angèle defends them all as “real” encounters, he pushes back to say that it does not make them “interesting” stories. Winocour feels motivated in Couture to say that these stories are interesting. She asserts they are worthwhile because they are real, and because the people involved in them have journeys and stories within them that one can never expect without simply talking to them, as Angèle’s work has afforded her the opportunity to do. Couture is very scaled down dramatically and often neo-realist in its roots. Even though Winocour cast big movie stars, Couture is after human truth and unvarnished reality. The focus of the show are the big artistic directors behind it all, the celebrities, and the outfits, but Winocour shows that there is more than first meets the eye, that beyond the exterior is a wealth of human experience, feeling, and creativity.

Along with this scene is one where Maxine first arrives in Paris. She is set to meet with the directors behind Fashion Week to discuss their notes on her proposal for the opening short film. Maxine, who has previously worked exclusively in low-budget horror films, wants to make a vampire film and she particularly wants to end the film with the model/actress facing the camera, revealing her vampire teeth, and screaming. It is a “scream of rage” and a “scream of liberation” as Maxine says, though the man representing the Fashion Week producers wants the scene cut. He will acquiesce in the end, though Maxine does not get the blood she wants. To some extent, it shows the compromises artists and women must make in a male-dominated world. However, the scene feels like more as Couture itself embodies the need for the scream and the importance of it being included. All four women encounter situations worth feeling enraged and upset about, despairing over the unfair circumstances thrust upon them that were out of their control. All four persevere, all four see to it that their impact is made. They may not literally scream, but their voices are heard.

Nevertheless, Couture struggles in its own balance. Maxine’s journey as a filmmaker and as a woman who, upon arriving in Paris, is diagnosed with breast cancer and discovers she needs to undergo chemotherapy that will delay her next film project, tends to overshadow the picture. By comparison, the arcs for Ada, Christine, and Angèle are more underdeveloped and, thus, less fulfilling. The stories all work in concert with one another and paint a captivating thematic picture – and all four, like Maxine, faces physical struggles from Ada’s twisted ankle and period, Christine’s wounds from sewing, and Angèle’s mental and physical exhaustion – but compared to Maxine, none are as rich in depth. Some of that will be Jolie’s movie star magnetism, though the performances of Rumpf, Marillier, and Anei all impress. Most of it is simply the attention given to that section, the numerous scenes of Maxine meeting with her doctor, having a beautiful encounter with another patient at the clinic, her struggles in trying to tell her daughter the news, and her own journey with her body from being dismayed at having her career waylaid, her desire to feel touch and affection before everything changes, and her urgency in meeting this moment with the seriousness it demands. It is a captivating and moving journey, a chance for Jolie to explore on film some of the emotions she confronted in her own personal life and the result is naturally raw and deeply affecting. This is an asset to Couture, but the depth and emotional involvement of this section leaves the other members of its ensemble feeling more like side quests in a story dominated by Maxine and her journey.

Consistently, Couture is a beautiful and striking film. Cinematographer André Chemetoff does great work with he and Winocour’s work truly excelling in the climactic Fashion Week scene. The use of some slow motion, the wind and rain effects as a storm strikes as the models are walking, and the dresses billowing and blowing in the wind makes for quite the beautiful sequence. There is a beauty in the chaos of it all, particularly in the shots of the main cast that Winocour and Chemetoff work into this scene. Maxine all on her own, contemplating and ruminating on the next steps of her life. Ada, powering through her ankle injury, and feeling empowered and grinning ear-to-ear even as she gets drenched in the rain. Christine’s dress is at the center of it all, perhaps soaked but nevertheless stunning. Angèle sneaks away into a gazebo to hide from the rain, and there finds some time to write. Without words, the scene communicates so much emotion and as Maxine’s short film plays on a big screen by the runway, it ties in every emotion of liberation, empowerment, and personal expression that underpins all of the stories at the center of Couture. That short film, too, is an impressive technical marvel with the film-within-the-film featuring a nice set design with Winocour going behind-the-scenes to show how it all comes to life with smoke effects, a forest set, and slick editing to work in the animals that Maxine wants included. As Couture explores these women’s lives, its portrayal of the working relationship between Maxine and her crew, especially Anton (Louis Garrel), is a cool element that adds some meta enjoyment to watching Winocour and Chemetoff execute big set pieces like the aforementioned Fashion Week storm scene.

Couture is an often quiet and subdued film, a study of four women united by their involvement at Paris Fashion Week and carrying with them considerable emotion, ambition, and uncertainty. It is a celebration of the strength and determination of the women at its center, as well as a study of artistic expression and self-actualization. However, Couture is held back by its struggle to balance the stories of these four women with Maxine’s story often dominating the focus and the other three receiving more surface-level and less rich in detail approaches. This imbalance often fractures the pacing of Couture, though the overall journeys are emotionally engaging enough to mostly overcome this weakness.