Couture, the title of French filmmaker Alice Winocour\u2019s most recent effort, literally translates to \u201cstitches.\u201d This is appropriate for a film that entrenches itself in the small details of Paris\u2019 fashion industry, particularly as it pertains to a reliance on women\u2019s labor. Just as a seamstress would assemble a haute garment, Winocour attempts to weave together the realities of three women\u2014a film director, a makeup artist, and a model\u2014to illustrate the disparate adversities they face as they attempt to hone their craft while nurturing their social, familial, and romantic lives. Their stories are often fascinating, melancholy, and even at times relatable. But the threads that bind their storylines are done with an amateur\u2019s haphazard hand, particularly when one character clearly takes narrative precedence over the others.\u00a0<\/p>\n
First, Couture meets Maxine Walker (Angelina Jolie), a filmmaker whose low-budget horror films have caught the eye of a prestigious brand that wants her to direct a short film that will open their Paris Fashion Week show. Of course, she is dressed in all black when she arrives at the label\u2019s office, fresh from CDG airport. Her schlubby-chic fit doesn\u2019t impress anyone on staff, who react with muted embarrassment when she opts to film a promotional interview in the same outfit. She manages to save face, however, when she is able to hold a conversation in French. \u201cMy mom was French,\u201d she explains with a smirk. While Jolie\u2019s real-life mother, Marcheline Bertrand, had French (Canadian) roots, the actress insisted on studying the language ahead of starring in Couture. Yet the rest of Maxine\u2019s storyline hews more closely to Jolie\u2019s lived experience: Divorce proceedings put pressure on her duties as a mother, and a health scare has her considering a double mastectomy. Just like that, Maxine must make a decision between tending to her health or to her career. The decision might seem easy on paper, but it\u2019s not every day that an indie filmmaker gets to play such an extravagant game of dress-up.<\/p>\n
As transfixing as Jolie is newcomer Anyier Anei, a lithe and striking South Sudanese model who is likely playing a loose version of herself. Winocour dissuaded Anei from taking acting lessons, which allowed her to give a markedly vulnerable performance as Ada, a twentysomething who arrives in the city after being scouted in her home country. She is placed in an apartment already filled with other models, forcing her to sleep on the floor. But the situation she finds herself in now\u2014untouched by war, far away from her strict family\u2019s judgemental eye, making real money for the first time in her life\u2014makes the mean girls tolerable. Despite her nascent career, Ada is chosen to star in the same show that Maxine\u2019s short film will open. She is instructed to practice her wobbly runway walk incessantly, but in this case practice results not in perfection, but pain that threatens to sabotage the show.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Finally, there\u2019s Ang\u00e8le (Ella Rumph, the hazing older sister in Raw<\/a>), whose gig as a makeup artist doesn\u2019t quite satisfy her creative itch. Her real passion lies in writing a metafictional memoir about her experience in the fashion industry that\u2019s rife with titillating angst. Despite the film literally being set in France, Ang\u00e8le is told that her edgy manuscript has no hope of being published. (This sentiment also feels odd hot off the heels of The Devil Wears Prada 2<\/a>.) It\u2019s less clear what Winocour is hoping to communicate through Ang\u00e8le, whose presence feels more ancillary than not. If Couture were a blouse, Maxine would be a bias-cut bust, Ada a pair of ornate but not totally essential silk sleeves, and Ang\u00e8le the back-up button sewn into the care label. For a character crafting a would-be expos\u00e9, there isn\u2019t much drama that unfolds around her. In fact, the industry itself is presented in a puzzlingly banal light. Just when you think Winocour might be ready to unveil some sort of horrifying truth\u2014pertaining to sexual misconduct, workplace abuse, or immigration issues\u2014nothing actually happens.\u00a0<\/p>\n