Paris Fashion Week. For anyone in the biz, or even just those who watched The Devil Wears Prada, this is the Super Bowl, the Wrestlemania, the Oscars for the fashion industry. It has been documented on the big screen before in many forms, arguably most famously, from the gaudy, OTT Hollywood gaze in 1994’s Pret-A-Porter.
Couture is, thankfully, a more elegant and demure take on the fashion frenzy. Captured through the lens of French filmmaker Alice Winocour (Proxima, Mustang), this fictionalised account sees the lives of four different women intersect during the run up to the launch event: An American filmmaker, a Sudanese model thrust into the limelight, a seamstress making the opening outfit, and a make-up artist with aspirations of being a screenwriter.
She is determined to show the human side of the story. Putting the film’s focus on the faces behind the fashion.
One would normally describe new model Anyier’s journey as a “fish out of water”, but here she is thrown in the deep end and expected to either sink or swim, as she navigates the harsh truths and brutal reality of life on the catwalk.
The other stories outside of Ana’s do pale in comparison to film director Maxine Walker’s journey. Arriving in Paris to film an introductory video for the show, her world upended by a shock breast cancer diagnosis, and a French doctor, played by Vincent London, blunt bedside manner as it were in terms of prognosis and next steps.
There are some that would view fashion as a matter of life and death. The film that got her the job was a vampire film. Creatures that walk the line between life and death. The blurred lines between the two weave an intricate thread through the film. Walker is given stark options that will determine her chances of living or dying. Shoot a new film or do chemotherapy. Make something that could be her legacy, or look back and spend time with family.
The scene where Maxine gets her body marked up for surgery mirrors the way the models are poked and prodded during their dress fittings.
Perhaps scared of losing her sense of identity and sexuality, an act of impulsiveness and offer of intimacy with her director of photography (Louis Garrel) results in an amusing moment where awkward fumbling turns into a late night viewing of The Descent, where they debate the shades of red in the blood.
Jolie has withdrawn from being in front of the camera in recent years, with just two films since 2021’s Eternals. Her last one was a Golden Globe nominated “prima donna performance” in Maria. It is clear that her pickiness in choosing projects, leads her to giving her everything to a role.
Clearly drawing upon her own past, you can see her entire world and heart shatter into a million pieces as she sits in the doctor’s office trying to process the news. Jolie is exceptional. Delivering a raw performance of stunning vulnerability, and a reminder that she is one of the best actresses in the world.
If anything, she is so good, and her storyline is the one that dominates the narrative, that it threatens to overshadow the rest of the characters and film as a whole.
Thankfully, Winocour pulls all the different threads together in the final act, culminating in a stunning sequence where the fashion show threatens to be derailed by the weather, only to turn into a beautiful disaster that echoes Walker’s visual aesthetic.
Forget fast fashion, Winocour’s tailored slow-burn approach to Couture delivers a très chic cut of cinema.
Couture is available on Digital HD from 20 April. Distributed by Signature Entertainment
Rating: 
Director: Alice Winocour
Stars: Angelina Jolie, Louis Garrel, Ella Rumpf, Vincent London, Anyeir Anei
Runtime: 103 minutes
Country: France
