Director Alice Winocour takes us to Paris for fashion week in Couture, a movie that tells three loosely related stories, one featuring Angelina Jolie.
Perhaps you can already sense a problem. By having to switch the movie's focus from one character to another, Winocour loses the opportunity for in-depth looks at any of them, and Couture becomes more of a skim than a revelation.
Jolie plays Maxine, an American director of an indie horror film who's been invited to make a short opening film to kick off fashion week.
Eighteen-year-old Ada (Anyier Anei), an inexperienced, long-legged model, has been chosen to lead the parade of models that will open the show. Ada arrives in Paris from Kenya, where her family lives having fled wars in Sudan.
Finally, we meet Angele (Elle Rumpf), a make-up artist who's writing a book about her experiences in the fashion world.
Each of these characters faces different problems and opportunities. Maxine's participation in fashion week may provide her with a major career boost.
Ada must overcome shyness and fear as she enters a highly competitive and demanding business.
Angele wants to write successfully, to use her experience as a source of reflection.
A health crisis adds to Maxine's anxieties. Early on, she receives a call from her doctor in the US. He insists that Maxine immediately see a French specialist. It turns out she has breast cancer. The news about her diagnosis worsens throughout the course of the movie.
Following Ada provides an opportunity for Winocour to sketch the lives of young models, some of whom have already become cynical high-fashion veterans.
Eventually, parts of Angele's book are heard in a voice over narration. Presumably meant to add arty flavor, they can sound a bit pretentious.
Couture easily could have focused only on Jolie's character. Maxine’s issues become the movie’s most evocative and also do more to highlight complexities about women and their career paths, one of the movie's interests.
Strong casting and a potentially rich setting aren't entirely wasted, but the resultant effort shortchanges the movie's major characters without finding enough meaningful ways to mingle their stories.
No comments:
Post a Comment