The French aren\u2019t exactly famous for their warmth. Likewise, Paris Fashion Week isn\u2019t known to feature designers whose collections can be worn off the rack, instead showcasing works of great sartorial ambition, with severe silhouettes and playful flourishes alike. Yet somehow, French writer-director Alice Winocour\u2019s<\/a> new film, \u201cCouture,\u201d which follows four women whose lives intersect during Paris Fashion Week, cuts through the austerity with all the precision and grace of a pair of fabric shears. Winocour\u2019s filmmaking itself is as steely as a Parisian\u2019s gaze after you order the last croissant \u00e0 la p\u00e2tisserie. But something special happens when her simple yet stylish camera meets the gaze of her star, Angelina Jolie<\/a>. The gray skies part, the clouds lift and a warm maternal comfort spreads across the film, creeping in like the sun\u2019s rays falling on cobblestones still shining from a sudden downpour.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t be mistaken: \u201cCouture\u201d is not a happy film, at least not in the traditional sense. There is no tidy ending, or even a sense that everything will be alright. But Winocour finds calm hidden beneath the unrest, a moment to pause and breathe, just to feel alive as life forges on without our consent. \u201cCouture\u201d is a film of grief and gratitude, and how the two feelings have more in common than we understand. They spring from the same place and push us to similarly exaggerated states. When experiencing either emotion, everything \u2014 be it a piece of news, the prick of a finger, a conversation with a loved one living thousands of miles away \u2014 is magnified.<\/p>\n (Vertical Entertainment )<\/span> Angelina Jolie in \u201cCouture\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n As Maxine, an American director who\u2019s traveled to Paris to complete a short film that will play before a high-concept fashion show in the coming days, Jolie elegantly moves between these two sensations. This is the last project Maxine is doing before starting production on the movie she\u2019s been hoping to make her entire career. The short film will pay just enough money to live comfortably in the chaos of her upcoming indie production. Maxine glides along, bathed in gratitude, making assured artistic decisions and certain that she is on the precipice of something that will change her life forever. Sure enough, she is.<\/p>\n In Winocour\u2019s peek behind the curtain of the fashion industry, there is no artifice, no magazine coverline that says \u201cAngelina Jolie: Fabulous at 50!\u201d sandwiched next to blurbs about anti-aging procedures and dressing to hide your arms. Together, \u201cCouture\u201d and Jolie confront the true realities of age that have nothing to do with masking and everything to do with being as open and candid as possible.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But the life-altering event comes not in the form of fulfilling her life\u2019s dream, but as an unexpected cancer diagnosis, handed to her just as she\u2019s scheduled to wrap production on her short. There\u2019s the grief, seeping into Maxine\u2019s life and twisting itself around the gratitude, tightening its grip. Destabilized but determined to finish her current work, Maxine spends the remainder of her time in Paris between the set, her hotel room and her doctor\u2019s appointments, weighing her options and trying to reconcile her new reality with logic and poise that\u2019s quickly running dry.<\/p>\n Jolie herself has met impasses like this her entire life, and it\u2019s that air of empathy that makes \u201cCouture\u201d so disarmingly intimate. This is clearly a deeply personal film for her, and her performance is quite unlike any other she\u2019s given. Jolie\u2019s work is bold, and almost imperceptibly so, quietly channeling a part of herself that is entirely removed from the veneer of fame and celebrity. In Winocour\u2019s peek behind the curtain of the fashion industry, there is no artifice, no magazine coverline that says \u201cAngelina Jolie: Fabulous at 50!\u201d sandwiched next to blurbs about anti-aging procedures and dressing to hide your arms. Together, \u201cCouture\u201d and Jolie confront the true realities of aging that have nothing to do with masking and everything to do with being as open and candid as possible.<\/p>\n The film is, in a way, a cinematic continuation of all of the real-life work<\/a> Jolie has done to stress the importance of breast cancer<\/a> screenings and genetic testing. In 2013, Jolie had a preventative double mastectomy after learning that her chance of developing breast cancer was extremely high due to an inherited mutation in the BRCA gene<\/a>. Jolie\u2019s mother had breast cancer and died of ovarian cancer, and her aunt, who had the same BRCA1 gene defect as Jolie, died of breast cancer three months after Jolie\u2019s operation.<\/p>\n And although Jolie has been incredibly outspoken about her medical journey, \u201cCouture\u201d adds an exceptional new layer to the work she\u2019s already done. As many times as a person can be told to get tested, have regular checkups, and manage their health, cinema has a way of conveying the urgency of the things that we tell ourselves we can keep putting off. Admittedly, after watching the film, I booked a physical I\u2019ve been delaying for far too long. (That and my mom took care to remind me recently, too \u2014 hi, mom.)<\/p>\n Want more from culture than just the latest trend? The Swell highlights art made to last.<\/i> What could easily look like an updated version of Agn\u00e8s Varda\u2019s \u201cCl\u00e9o from 5 to 7\u201d \u2014 or the Sarah Jessica Parker-starring homage, 2018\u2019s \u201cHere and Now\u201d (don\u2019t watch this) \u2014 is rounded out into something all its own by Winocour\u2019s three other women. There\u2019s Ada (Anyier Anei), a South Sudanese model who has booked her first fashion gig starring in Maxine\u2019s film and opening the fashion show; Ang\u00e8le (Ella Rumpf), a harried makeup artist with dreams of writing a novel about her experiences in the industry; and Christine (Garance Marillier), the seamstress tasked with sewing the gown Ada will wear in the show.<\/p>\n Call it a stretch, call it being good at your job, but it\u2019s difficult to deny how much of Jolie is embedded within the screenplay.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Winocour wisely places all of her protagonists in different fields within the same industry, and at different points in their careers. Ada is facing a make-or-break debut and struggling with a homesickness that seems to outweigh her desire to model. Christine is only slightly more experienced, no longer an atelier apprentice, but is just beginning to prove herself, constructing her first garment entirely on her own. And Ang\u00e8le is talented and well-known in Parisian beauty circles, but is beginning to feel that her canvas is the bare page, not a model\u2019s bare face.<\/p>\n As the days progress, and Maxine, Ang\u00e8le, Ada and Christine cross paths in one way or another, they each experience a similar existential conundrum, with no one to guide them toward the right choice but themselves. Winocour\u2019s pacing is languid, but never boring. She\u2019s impeccably talented at conveying feeling without too much dialogue, and all of her actors are game to meet her simplicity, relying on facial expressions and body language to tell a story that can only be understood in the mind. No matter how much we talk about the things that we\u2019re trying to work through, asking our friends or our family or our pets what we should do, the final choice will always be ours.<\/p>\n (Vertical Entertainment)<\/span> Angelina Jolie and Louis Garrel in \u201cCouture\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Watching Maxine ponder her options is particularly affecting, especially in the moments when she tries \u2014 and sometimes fails \u2014 to reach her daughter, Eden, over the phone. Eden is back in New York, dealing with the effects of an ongoing divorce between her mother and father. There are moments when, with no other actor visible, Jolie speaks to Eden over the phone with such a heartbreaking, beautiful cadence and tenderness that it\u2019s as if you\u2019re watching her break character and speak to her own children. Call it a stretch, call it being good at your job, but it\u2019s difficult to deny how much of Jolie is embedded within the screenplay. Maxine is, after all, also an artist, trying to preserve her relationship with her children while going through a divorce, contemplating just how honest to be as she works through her mind\u2019s frenzied state. It\u2019s as good as Jolie playing herself, and it\u2019s that touching, too.<\/p>\n But there is one moment that made me inadvertently laugh, not long after Maxine receives her diagnosis. Sitting in the waiting room, mentally preparing for an MRI, Maxine opens a browser and searches, \u201cBREAST CANCER.\u201d I was instantly reminded of a hokey moment<\/a> in \u201cGossip Girl,\u201d when a character gets word of a similar diagnosis and takes to Bing (of all search engines!) to search, simply, \u201ccancer.\u201d Initially, this shot in \u201cCouture\u201d gave me a chuckle and took me out of the film. But to their credit, Winocour and Jolie pulled me right back in. Maxine thumbs through the image results, past 3D medical renderings and images of bare breasts, finding nothing to calm her nerves. Maybe she doesn\u2019t know what she\u2019s looking for, or where to start. Perhaps there isn\u2019t a starting point so much as a continuation, marching forward through life, grappling with the unexpected events that occur, and all the complicated feelings that come with them.<\/p>\n Read more<\/p>\n about movies you shouldn\u2019t miss<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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