As we’ve previously pointed out, just about every iconic fashion designer from the past century has gotten the historical biopic treatment in some form or another, from a film about Yves Saint Laurent, to a limited series about Christian Dior & Coco Chanel, to a play about Alexander McQueen.
Image Credit: ‘Couture,’ HanWay Films
And yet stories set in the contemporary world of fashion are few and far between, which feels strange considering its natural mix of high stakes and high glamor feels like a rich basis for plenty of drama.
Thankfully there’s Couture, a new film from French writer-director Alice Winocour (who wrote the award-winning 2015 drama Mustang), which follows the intersecting lives of three women during Paris Fashion Week that looks appropriately gorgeous.
Of course, it probably doesn’t hurt that one of those women is played by Angelina Jolie, one of the most gorgeous people on the planet! The out bi star has been pretty selective about her work of late (this is only her eighth on-screen role since 2010!), so her presence makes Couture hotly anticipated.
She plays Maxine, an American filmmaker who comes to Paris to shoot an extravagant short film for a prestigious fashion house. In the midst of a divorce and fretting over her teenaged daughter, she’s distracted even further by a surprise breast cancer diagnosis, which a friendly French doctor (Titane‘s Vincent Lindon) suggests she have treated immediately.
Unable to process her feelings around it all, she lashes out by way of sleeping with her sexy cinematographer (Louis Garrel, who played Saint Laurent’s lover in that aforementioned biopic). We can’t lie: The chance to see these two stunning actors get intimate feels worth the price of admission alone!
But of course there’s more to Couture. As an inexperienced model with a prominent role in Maxine’s film, newcomer Anyier Anei’s Ada is our audience surrogate, getting a glimpse at the fashion world beyond the runway for the first time. From an unspecified war-torn African country, she feels like a fish-out-of-water in Paris’s luxurious scene, and he character is all the more compelling for it.
