As this film’s producer-star, Angelina Jolie shows honesty and courage in tackling a story that so closely mirrors her own experience of having a double mastectomy to prevent breast cancer. But sadly, the film itself feels specious and shallow, insisting with bland and weirdly humourless confidence on the glamorous importance of the fashion world in which it is set.
Jolie’s character, Maxine, is an American indie film-maker just arrived in Paris, having been picked to direct the opening short movie for a super-prestigious fashion show. Her character is first-among-equals in the ensemble cast. Anyier Anei is Ada, a fledgling model from South Sudan who is to be the show’s star; Ella Rumpf plays makeup artist and would-be writer Angèle, trying to convert her experiences into an edgy fictionalised memoir; Louis Garrel smoulders and frowns as only he can as Anton, the first assistant director on Maxine’s film; and Vincent Lindon is the rumpled, caring Dr Hansen, who has the unhappy task of telling Maxine that his American colleague has passed on to him the results of her recent biopsy, and that she has breast cancer. (He sadly watches her walking away down the pavement from his high window after their consultation, while smoking a pensive cigarette.)
Maxine is stunned to receive the news, and to realise that her planned new movie after the Paris event may have to be put on hold, or even abandoned altogether. Jolie does her best with this intimately painful scenario but the script from writer-director Alice Winocour is often frankly glib. Ada is supposed to have injured her ankle the night before the big show, larking around with her model friends in the hotel, demonstrating runway walk styles in heels. Will she able to mask this injury, the way Maxine initially tries to deny her diagnosis? It’s not clear; this plotline really comes to nothing. Fashion on film can so often look precious, and unfortunately this is no exception. Yet Jolie’s star quality is always there.
Couture is on digital platforms from 20 April.