{"id":726,"date":"2026-06-27T20:37:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-27T20:37:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=726"},"modified":"2026-06-27T20:37:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-27T20:37:10","slug":"couture-reviewed-angelina-jolie-faces-trouble-with-style","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=726","title":{"rendered":"\u201cCouture,\u201d Reviewed: Angelina Jolie Faces Trouble with Style"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n

A movie doesn\u2019t have to be great for a viewer to wish it were longer. The new drama \u201cCouture,\u201d set in the Parisian high-fashion scene, is at times fairly flimsy, because its many story lines call for extended treatment but are crammed and trimmed to a mere hour and three-quarters. The title isn\u2019t misleading, but the casting is: the star is Angelina Jolie (who\u2019s also one of the producers), but her screen time in the movie isn\u2019t quite commensurate with her fame. Directed by Alice Winocour, who also wrote the script with Jean-St\u00e9phane Bron, \u201cCouture\u201d is a dramatic mosaic, a series of sketches portraying a varied array of women whose work goes into the creation of a runway show. Jolie plays an American film director named Maxine Walker, a specialist in female-centered horror movies, who plans to shoot a promotional film for the brand in her signature vampire-genre style and to direct the runway show with something of the same gothic mystery.<\/p>\n

Read more Wow, Weather<\/a><\/p>\n

Maxine is the film\u2019s most substantially developed character, with the most detailed backstory. She lives in Los Angeles with her teen-age daughter, she\u2019s going through a divorce, and she\u2019s about to shoot a feature that she has been waiting a long time to make. At the same time, her doctor back home has concerns about a recent biopsy. Soon after arriving in Paris, she\u2019s examined by a French physician, Dr. Laurent Hansen (Vincent Lindon), who diagnoses her with breast cancer and recommends prompt surgery. The other three women all have connections to Maxine, yet she\u2019s not involved in their most developed and personally significant scenes. There\u2019s Ada (Anyier Anei), an eighteen-year-old South Sudanese model who\u2019ll lead the runway lineup; Ang\u00e8le (Ella Rumpf), a makeup artist who aspires to become a writer; and Christine (Garance Marillier), a seamstress whose exacting work will be displayed on the catwalk.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Ada, who\u2019s just beginning her career, is negotiating complexities that ought to have been explored far more substantially. She has come to France after emigrating from South Sudan to Kenya to escape war, and her family remains in Kenya (where she\u2019d been studying pharmacy). She plans to send money from modelling jobs home to her relatives, though she doesn\u2019t dare tell her father what she\u2019s doing to earn it. As soon as she\u2019s cast by Maxine, the fashion house puts her up in an apartment with other models (some jealous, some indifferent, some sympathetic) and works with her to refine her raw endowment of poise, grace, and expressivity. But she isn\u2019t paid up front, and her family\u2019s needs are pressing, so she resorts to asking a fellow-model for a loan. Ada\u2019s overlapping cycles of initiation and desperation are intensely dramatic, but the movie\u2019s hectic pace leaves each of them merely encapsulated in brief onscreen action or a few lines of dialogue, left undeveloped.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

The compressed script and the snippety editing sometimes lead to unintended comedy, as in a scene where Maxine watches Christine, the seamstress, work. While sewing by hand, Christine accidentally pricks a finger with a needle, and Winocour shows a drop of blood blossoming on her fingertip\u2014only to show her, an instant later, again sewing the white dress, without as much as blotting or bandaging the finger to protect the garment. As for Ang\u00e8le\u2019s desire to write, it gets farmed out in a clip that she watches, of the late Marguerite Duras in a filmed interview, describing a writer as someone who doesn\u2019t wait for the right circumstances but simply and unhesitatingly writes. By keeping the movie brisk, Winocour also turns it superficial, its substance removed from the realm of experience and trivialized into plot points.<\/p>\n

The result is paradoxical, however, because the lack of detailed development afforded to the main characters allows others to come to the fore. Early in the film, when Maxine is welcomed at the unnamed fashion house (the scenes were filmed in the offices of Chanel, the first time the company allowed a fiction film to shoot there), she\u2019s received graciously by the company\u2019s creative director. He\u2019s played by Gr\u00e9goire Colin, one of the great modern French actors, whose onscreen persona combines unrelieved woundedness with barely repressed violence. His character in \u201cCouture\u201d\u2014wearing a finely tailored suit and a sculpted corporate coiffure\u2014is genteel, cordial, ice-cold, and calmly terrifying. In a brief scene, with just a few glances and a few lines of dialogue, he conveys the raw force that drives the fashion industry and its peacocky displays. A hint of conflict between him and Maxine never bursts forth, but his prerogative lurks throughout.<\/p>\n

Read more Tennessee Williams with Air-Conditioning<\/a><\/p>\n

Other casting choices further skew the story toward minor characters. Marillier and Rumpf are experienced young actresses who\u2019ve played lead roles in other films, but they don\u2019t yet have crystallized screen personae, and the movie doesn\u2019t grant them enough cinematic space to develop their characters. Anei is a real-life model who actually studied pharmacy (and, like Ada, lied to her father about her job), but she has little acting experience, and her presence in the film calls out for patient, quasi-documentary observation that never occurs. By contrast, the three male actors who appear in major supporting roles\u2014along with Colin, there\u2019s Lindon as the doctor and Louis Garrel as Maxine\u2019s cinematographer and, ultimately, lover\u2014are all veterans whose iconic presences make their small roles feel unusually, even inappropriately, prominent. Lindon (who, like Colin, is a longtime associate of Claire Denis) carries the hard edge of worldliness, packs the power of calculation, and moves with an abrupt certitude\u2014a trio of traits that give his doctor character irresistible authority. As for Garrel, he\u2019s heroically hangdog, the professional artist incarnate, self-consciously sensitive and playfully burdened. As the stoic and sympathetic cinematographer, he represents the French film industry with modest and humane artistic qualities that Maxine\u2014and, for that matter, Jolie\u2014seek out far from Hollywood.<\/p>\n

All of this makes me wonder what \u201cCouture\u201d would have looked like if Jolie had directed it in addition to starring. She\u2019s an actress of fierce power even in repose, and when she directed herself in the 2015 movie \u201cBy the Sea,\u201d an intense story of marital discord, she unleashed melodramatic furies with tense restraint. \u201cCouture\u201d confronts an agonizing subject of which Jolie has firsthand knowledge (in 2013, after discovering that she had a genetic predisposition to breast cancer, she underwent a double mastectomy), and, in the face of the film\u2019s stolid direction, she wisely downplays Maxine\u2019s expressions and lets the subject itself deliver its emotional force\u2014with one fascinating exception. The movie\u2019s turning point is a scene in which Dr. Hansen informs Maxine that she\u2019ll require a difficult course of treatment. He advises her to put all her professional commitments aside, but she\u2019s a month away from directing her long-pursued film, and she poignantly, passionately tries to negotiate with him, as if, rather than trying to save her life, he were a banker calling in a debt or a judge issuing a sentence. (In this regard, \u201cCouture\u201d has something in common with a more accomplished new French film, \u201cThe Little Sister,\u201d directed by Hafsia Herzi\u2014an emphasis on the professional infrastructure of daily life, which Herzi similarly achieved through casting. It\u2019s a subject that has long loomed, more or less conspicuously, in the French cinema, in the same way that the institutions of French society, relatively centralized and bureaucratized, loom large in daily life.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

There\u2019s another moment in \u201cCouture\u201d that leaps out from the rest of the movie, in which Winocour\u2019s direction goes beyond the confines of the thinly scripted drama to create an audiovisual experience. Ang\u00e8le, the makeup artist, has been writing a real-life account of her observations at work, and her writings apostrophize the action, most extensively during a climactic scene in which the staging of the runway show falls prey to bad weather. The windswept tumult is filmed in lyrical slow motion, with high-contrast lighting, and the imagery meshes with Ang\u00e8le\u2019s text to evoke the inner lives of Maxine and Ada, conjuring subjectivity itself. The scene is a Pyrrhic victory, however, because its self-transcending metaphorical power only emphasizes the blandly literal hour and a half that came before.\u00a0\u2666<\/p>\n

Read more I Am a Man, and I Run Hot<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Richard Brody\u2019s review of \u201cCouture.\u201d The new melodrama, starring Jolie as a movie director, treats the Paris fashion world as a backdrop for medical and domestic crises.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":725,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-front-row"],"yoast_head":"\n\u201cCouture,\u201d Reviewed: Angelina Jolie Faces Trouble with Style - City Relocation News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=726\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"\u201cCouture,\u201d Reviewed: Angelina Jolie Faces Trouble with Style - City Relocation News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Richard Brody\u2019s review of \u201cCouture.\u201d The new melodrama, starring Jolie as a movie director, treats the Paris fashion world as a backdrop for medical and domestic crises.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=726\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"City Relocation News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-06-27T20:37:10+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"7 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=726#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=726\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/3e7ce0c0c60d21e12a5ac61fb2b786d4\"},\"headline\":\"\u201cCouture,\u201d Reviewed: Angelina Jolie Faces Trouble with Style\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-06-27T20:37:10+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=726\"},\"wordCount\":1428,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=726#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/e2fb778eb98addb446c9181b3480545c.webp\",\"articleSection\":[\"The Front Row\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=726#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=726\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=726\",\"name\":\"\u201cCouture,\u201d Reviewed: Angelina Jolie Faces Trouble with Style - City Relocation News\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=726#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=726#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/e2fb778eb98addb446c9181b3480545c.webp\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-06-27T20:37:10+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/3e7ce0c0c60d21e12a5ac61fb2b786d4\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=726#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=726\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=726#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/e2fb778eb98addb446c9181b3480545c.webp\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/e2fb778eb98addb446c9181b3480545c.webp\",\"width\":1280,\"height\":720},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=726#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"\u201cCouture,\u201d Reviewed: Angelina Jolie Faces Trouble with Style\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/\",\"name\":\"City Relocation News\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/3e7ce0c0c60d21e12a5ac61fb2b786d4\",\"name\":\"admin\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/secure.gravatar.com\\\/avatar\\\/50b1ad2e498f523425ee0a8cc5180a210646db1622662a3d56cc405d3e0c346a?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/secure.gravatar.com\\\/avatar\\\/50b1ad2e498f523425ee0a8cc5180a210646db1622662a3d56cc405d3e0c346a?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/secure.gravatar.com\\\/avatar\\\/50b1ad2e498f523425ee0a8cc5180a210646db1622662a3d56cc405d3e0c346a?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"admin\"},\"sameAs\":[\"http:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\"],\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?author=1\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"\u201cCouture,\u201d Reviewed: Angelina Jolie Faces Trouble with Style - City Relocation News","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=726","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"\u201cCouture,\u201d Reviewed: Angelina Jolie Faces Trouble with Style - City Relocation News","og_description":"Richard Brody\u2019s review of \u201cCouture.\u201d The new melodrama, starring Jolie as a movie director, treats the Paris fashion world as a backdrop for medical and domestic crises.","og_url":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=726","og_site_name":"City Relocation News","article_published_time":"2026-06-27T20:37:10+00:00","author":"admin","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"admin","Est. reading time":"7 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=726#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=726"},"author":{"name":"admin","@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/#\/schema\/person\/3e7ce0c0c60d21e12a5ac61fb2b786d4"},"headline":"\u201cCouture,\u201d Reviewed: Angelina Jolie Faces Trouble with Style","datePublished":"2026-06-27T20:37:10+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=726"},"wordCount":1428,"commentCount":0,"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=726#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/e2fb778eb98addb446c9181b3480545c.webp","articleSection":["The Front Row"],"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=726#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=726","url":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=726","name":"\u201cCouture,\u201d Reviewed: Angelina Jolie Faces Trouble with Style - City Relocation News","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=726#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=726#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/e2fb778eb98addb446c9181b3480545c.webp","datePublished":"2026-06-27T20:37:10+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/#\/schema\/person\/3e7ce0c0c60d21e12a5ac61fb2b786d4"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=726#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=726"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=726#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/e2fb778eb98addb446c9181b3480545c.webp","contentUrl":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/e2fb778eb98addb446c9181b3480545c.webp","width":1280,"height":720},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=726#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"\u201cCouture,\u201d Reviewed: Angelina Jolie Faces Trouble with Style"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/#website","url":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/","name":"City Relocation News","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/#\/schema\/person\/3e7ce0c0c60d21e12a5ac61fb2b786d4","name":"admin","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/50b1ad2e498f523425ee0a8cc5180a210646db1622662a3d56cc405d3e0c346a?s=96&d=mm&r=g","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/50b1ad2e498f523425ee0a8cc5180a210646db1622662a3d56cc405d3e0c346a?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/50b1ad2e498f523425ee0a8cc5180a210646db1622662a3d56cc405d3e0c346a?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"admin"},"sameAs":["http:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com"],"url":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?author=1"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}