“Funny, you spend all this time preparing for these things to happen, and then the thing you never saw coming…there it is.”
Watching Couture, the new arthouse drama starring Angelina Jolie, my mind couldn’t help but go straight back to the 1998 film Gia, in which the actress famously portrayed the late supermodel Gia Carangi. Maybe it’s because I’m just wrapping up work on a Faye Dunaway podcast where I covered the film where Dunaway has a supporting role as Gia’s mentor, Wilhelmina Cooper, who died of cancer. The way Jolie showed her character moving through the world of fashion in that film feels right at home here. She carries a similar attitude and careful distance to the one she did in Gia, while still making sure the character feels like a unique woman in her own right. The key difference here is that now she’s the one who has cancer; in essence, she’s now Wilhelmina. While Couture could do with some much-needed focus and streamlining, it remains interesting enough to follow because of Jolie’s portrayal of a woman who has achieved so much and is now in deeply frightening terrain.
In Couture, American filmmaker Maxine Walker (Angelina Jolie) has arrived in Paris during Fashion Week to begin work on her new project, a film that will open the week itself. However, a devastating diagnosis reveals she has breast cancer, sending her on an introspective journey as she begins to wonder what her future holds. At the same time, novice model Ada (Anyier Anei) and professional make-up artist Angele (Ella Rumpf) wrestle with their own respective places within the industry.
Writer/director Alice Winocour does right by letting us get to know Maxine prior to her diagnosis. We see her as a woman of great vision and obvious influence where her art is concerned. She’s very self-assured and secure in that vision, giving off a sense that this isn’t a woman who does too much second-guessing about her work; trusting, instead, the sheer power of her instincts. Through Maxine’s careful and detailed approach to everything she does, the film manages a thoughtful insight into her creative process and the exacting nature with which she approaches it with. It’s great to see Maxine as an artist who throws herself into all aspects of what she creates, and even more interesting to see how her relationship to it changes once she receives the news. She’s obviously scared but is desperately trying to not to let herself be scared, even though she’s smart enough to know what the situation is even before she receives the news. Still, the disbelief in her face when she finds out she’s got cancer is so open and honest. Once the news has been delivered, a need within Maxine to remain sturdy begins to battle the side of her that’s vulnerable and afraid. The way Maxine begins to emotionally, yet quietly, plead to be able to shoot her film before starting chemo is one of her best moments in the film. She’s worked for the ability to make her film, and she doesn’t want to let it go; it signifies, for her, just how much more she’s giving up. Likewise, her proposition of sex to her artistic director Anton (Louis Garrel) feels like an effort on her part to exist away from this disease. In her mind, being in a sexual place allows her to be in a space where the disease can’t find her.
Had the film been solely about Maxine’s journey, it would’ve worked beautifully. Yet Couture inserts a hefty B-plot that offers a behind-the-scenes look into the modeling industry. The commentary that’s being provided is nothing new, yet one can certainly appreciate the matter-of-fact nature in which the world is presented, especially in the way it operates, which is neither stylized nor dramatic. The whole modeling apartment sequence, where Ada finds herself among a collection of no-name models, most of whom don’t know each other, speaks to this. A moment between her and a Ukrainian model is telling as it shows two girls trying to make it in this profession as a way of escaping the worlds they come from. With its unvarnished working-class approach to this world, this side of Couture partially works because of the way it shows modeling as just another area of life; it’s not everyone’s life, certainly, but it is a part of life nonetheless. The authenticity is strengthened by the way Ada isn’t presented as a modeling phenom, but as a genuine newcomer trying to understand and shape her skill as a model. The same goes for Angele’s scenes. We don’t typically get to follow such figures from that world, which makes the character’s continued efforts to leave it behind by becoming a writer feel somewhat interesting, especially in the crushing way she’s shot down. These sections of the film end up working more than they don’t, and I would watch a movie following these characters. But paired up with the main storyline, it can’t compete with the far more compelling nature of Maxine’s journey.
Couture is one of the rare instances of Jolie in arthouse mode. I’m always taken aback when she does something small-scale like this that feels grounded and doesn’t come with a lot of grandeur. It’s times like these that her natural talents as an actress are allowed to shine, which they do. Jolie plays Maxine’s quiet determination with as much investment as she does her fear, resulting in one of the more humanized characters she’s played in a long time. A scene where the character is talking to her daughter on the phone after getting the diagnosis is a standout that’s made even more compelling by the fact that Jolie’s own mother battled cancer for years before finally succumbing to it. One has to wonder how much of her own past she tapped into in order to deliver the scene, which she does beautifully. Even though their storylines aren’t needed at all, Anei and Rumpf are both such watchable presences and present their characters as genuine participants in an industry made up of illusions.
While Couture tries hard to sell the two films that are crammed into one, the main storyline still retains enough impact to call the whole affair a flawed success. This is due almost entirely to Jolie’s work and the way she conveys Maxine’s fear and disbelief. A moment when she’s stroking the wigs to be used for her upcoming shoot shows her processing the diagnosis, while an exchange between her and a random woman in a doctor’s waiting room who also has cancer is touching, especially in the way they wish each other luck before departing. Finally, there’s the scene in the finale where Maxine’s outdoor nighttime shoot is thwarted by sudden rain. As all the models scurry away, we see her gliding through the trees in a dazed, pensive way that evokes Jeanne Moreau’s iconic rain-filled stroll in Elevator to the Gallows. It’s here that we fully understand Maxine as a woman who has worked hard and obviously sacrificed to achieve her dreams, only to have life halt them. Who is she now that what she worked for may not even be possible? The film doesn’t give us an answer, but it does suggest that Maxine is going to try to find out.
