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\n Photo: Pathe Films\/Courtesy Everett Collection\n <\/p>\n
In the late 1960s, the luxury mink-fur brand Blackglama started an ad campaign I think of often. It featured the boldest of divas \u2014 including Barbra Streisand, Bette Davis, Lauren Bacall, and Elizabeth Taylor \u2014 in Blackglama\u2019s extravagant fur with the tagline hanging above their incandescent eyes: \u201cWhat becomes a legend most?\u201d The grammatically questionable line has the frisson of intrigue and awe. Angelina Jolie \u2014 the 51-year-old activist, mother, and actor \u2014 is seen above all else in the public as a star and sex symbol whose reputation enters the room before she does. She\u2019d fit into the Blackglama ads easily.<\/p>\n
Her stardom has a gravitational effect. It often warps how her work is received \u2014 like it did with her tremendous (and critically panned) directorial effort 2015\u2019s By the Sea, in which Jolie\u2019s camera gazes upon herself with a care and complexity never before seen in her career. Other times, it disrupts how her personal life is talked about, like the uncharitable way the public has talked about her motives in her divorce with Brad Pitt<\/a> and the stunning allegations of abuse stemming from a 2016 incident in which Pitt reportedly choked at least one of his children and physically and emotionally intimidated Jolie. The reputation and histories of a star are intimately wedded to how we interpret their work onscreen. In Jolie\u2019s latest film \u2014 written and directed by French filmmaker Alice Winocour \u2014 the metatextual dimensions of Jolie\u2019s visage are as much the star of the film as she is as an actor.<\/p>\n Couture is a film of gentle countenance. Jolie plays Maxine Walker, an independent filmmaker in Paris for Fashion Week crafting a horror short film for a fashion house that will play before its runway show.\u00a0Pushed to describe fashion in two words with a wry glint in her eyes, she says it is \u201cuseless and necessary.\u201d Fluttering effortlessly between French and English, Maxine is a woman beset by having to find a tricksy balance between her artistic desires and, to quote Bette Davis\u2019s Margo Channing in 1950\u2019s All About Eve, the business of being a woman. She navigates disagreements with the short film\u2019s cinematographer, Anton (Louis Garrel, a touch too sedate), and the fashion house funding this endeavor. She fields calls from her soon-to-be-ex-husband whose animosity is evident when he says, \u201cYou aren\u2019t the center of the world.\u201d Financial pressures abound for Maxine. Then she gets a troubling call from her doctor in Los Angeles about biopsy results. Later, in person, Dr. Hansen (the always striking Vincent Lindon) tells her what her L.A.-based doctor was too reticent to do over the phone: \u201cYou\u2019re young. You have cancer. We must act quickly.\u201d Jolie\u2019s face cracks with the realization of this truth before it quivers under the magnitude of it. The teariness and shock that follows got under my skin. Oh, how lonely it is recognizing the ways your own body can betray you. It\u2019s difficult to not think of Jolie\u2019s own history, if you\u2019re aware of it: Her mother died after a yearslong battle with ovarian and breast cancer in 2007 at only 56 years old. Jolie tested positive for the BRCA1 gene <\/a>that demonstrates a high likelihood of breast-cancer diagnosis, leading her to the decision to have a double mastectomy<\/a> as well as the complete removal of her ovaries and Fallopian tubes.<\/p>\n While the metatextual is an intriguing current in Couture, its waters run deeper than that. Winocour\u2019s script also delves into the lives of other women in this swath of the\u00a0fashion world. There\u2019s the empathetic makeup artist Ang\u00e8le (Ella Rumpf), who deals with gossiping men at work while trying to spark a career as a writer. Her voice-over stitches together various women\u2019s stories as she pulls from her experiences and the lives of those she crosses paths with for her writing. There\u2019s the young designer\/seamstress Christine (played by the lead of Raw, Garance Marillier). And then there\u2019s Ada (Anyier Anei), the 18-year-old model fresh to Paris and the industry, struggling to summon the confidence necessary to do what\u2019s asked of her. The stories of Christine and Ang\u00e8le feel notably thinly drawn compared to Ada\u2019s journey.<\/p>\n Born in South Sudan, Ada\u2019s family moved to Kenya in the wake of the war. She wanted to go to school to become a pharmacist, which her father forbade her from continuing. But after getting scouted outside of school, she has taken to modeling, with her brother and mother\u2019s blessing. Her father is none the wiser. As with Maxine, Ada\u2019s history is communicated through dialogue, wistful gazes, and tense phone calls with the people close to her heart, but not in her physical presence. I was especially impressed by Anei\u2019s performance. Her face is akin to looking at the bottom of a bejeweled bowl full of clear, crisp water. Every shift in light and emotion at the bottom is evident, as if you\u2019re seeing through the flesh to witness something more powerful: the soul. Jolie\u2019s performance is similarly transfixing. Each minute gesture and crack in her facial expression opens up new worlds of connection. Maxine builds a surprising rapport with Anton that shifts from professionally antagonistic to emotionally warm and sexually charged thanks to a proposition she makes at a bar that leads to a kiss. The film tangles with the startling synchronicities of life in which loss and growth are bound together, and the people you meet in passing have a surprisingly profound effect on the course of your story. Sometimes the care you need comes from the most unlikely of sources.<\/p>\n Consider the touching, brief scene between Maxine and a woman who looks to be in her 60s in the doctor\u2019s office as they wait to be called in for their respective MRIs. The woman recounts throwing a party celebrating her life after the cancer diagnosis that now impedes her future. For a fleeting moment, she and Maxine hold hands and gaze into one another\u2019s eyes with a sense of quiet understanding. This is the strength that can be found in even a passing human connection with someone you may never see again.<\/p>\n Winocour\u2019s decision to dip in and out of the lives of these very different women creates a bricolage of creative desire and personal complications. The hard work of these women keeps the fashion industry running despite the troublesome forces they must contend with in order to make their creative visions a reality, whether it\u2019s a cancer diagnosis or the nitpicking cruelty of the men in their creative orbit. It is exceedingly rare to watch films that care about the interior lives and exterior narratives older women must make sense of in the manner Couture handles Maxine\u2019s story. It\u2019s even rarer to watch films that depict women along cross-cultural and cross-generational lines that urge us to take the prosaic nature of life seriously. It would be easy to look at Couture as slight. But its observational curiosity hones in on the tender qualities of day-to-day life,\u00a0where emotionally ground-shaking revelations sit next to the mundane. But there\u2019s no time to waste dwelling on the wanting rather than the living required of us. After all, there\u2019s always work to do.<\/p>\n Sign up for The Critics<\/p>\n A weekly dispatch on the cultural discourse, for subscribers only.<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n