Angelina Jolie anchors a muted, contemplative drama in French director Alice Winocour’s Couture. The film, which premiered at TIFF, follows three women during Paris Fashion Week Jolie is Maxine Walker, a goth-adjacent indie horror director who has been commissioned to make a short film for a runway show. She crosses paths with Ada (Anyier Anei), an 18-year-old South Sudanese model who touches down in France on the eve of her first job, and Angèle (Ella Rumpf), a seasoned make-up artist working on her first book.

For a film set amid the chaos of Fashion Week, Couture is quite staid as it deals with the heavy circumstances that each woman is facing. Maxine arrives in Paris on the heels of a cancer diagnosis, directing an eerie vampire film that keeps questions of mortality at the front of mind. Ada, meanwhile, is grappling with navigating this chaotic new world, surrounded by mostly white fashion models who are as apathetic as they are striking.

Finally, Angèle must contend with her own ambitions as a writer while flitting backstage and brushing up the makeup of the models. Couture doesn’t go big on emotion in a visual way, instead letting us settle into the daily rhythms of these women as they process the world around them. Winocour relies instead on her actors to convey the hefty toll such a jet-setting life can take.

It’s a fascinating approach for the film, one that leaves room for an emptiness that feels like it’s trying to reflect the world it navigates, though there are gestures to depth that feel left on the cutting room floor like the scraps of fabric sheared off a dress. The contrast between this simple approach and the high-energy of the fashion world is engaging nonetheless, even if Couture doesn’t quite reach the emotional heights it’s striving for.

Couture’s Subtlety Doesn’t Lack Nuance

Jolie is, of course, the big draw here. Maxine is a bit of an enigma, navigating a seemingly contentious divorce and tumultuous relationship with her daughter, the pair of whom are only heard over the phone. She’s trapped between ambition — after the runaway film, she has another major project lined up — and her commitment to her family, which makes her diagnosis all the more significant in how it determines her next steps.

Does she take care of herself (and her daughter) by going through treatment and forgoing her next film, which she says she fought for years to make, or does she stay the course and risk her health to complete her pᴀssion project? For a workaholic like Maxine, it’s a tougher question than you might think.

Ada, too, is facing similar questions when it comes to work and family. She’s left her mother, brother, and father behind, the latter of whom does not know the real reason she’s in Paris. As Ada adjusts to her new lifestyle, her brother often questions if she’ll ever come home, but Ada doesn’t even seem to know the answer to that question.

Angèle is perhaps the most elusive of the three and the only character in the film who presumably calls Paris home. Like Ada and Maxine, who are forced to make the city their home in the brief period the film explores, Angèle is a fascinating figure, though she is shortchanged by the script, which focuses more on Ada and Maxine. The latter must decide if she wants to undergo treatment in France and the doctor (Vincent Lindon) seems to insist that it’s enough of an emergency that she should.

Ada is without a home, though. The model apartment she’s been sent to by her agent doesn’t have a room for her and going back to her family means facing uncertain circumstances. Each woman, then, is in a sort of limbo, being pushed and pulled by forces beyond their control in a world that, though female-dominated, often disregards their agency.

Couture is quite a melancholic affair, even as it reaches its climax, a runway show on the outskirts of Paris that Maxine, Ada, and Angèle have all taken part in. As a storm descends on the woodsy location, it disrupts their hard work, making it seem like, maybe, all these sacrifices could have been in vain. Winocour’s film doesn’t go so far as to ᴀssert that the fashion world is frivolous — hard work goes into everything these women do as they put their health, bodies, and futures on the line.

The film may be too lowkey to leave an impact, though, and it’s hard not to notice that the energy of the characters in the background doesn’t match that of Couture‘s three stories or the way Winocour’s camera languidly moves through ateliers and backstage corridors. Jolie, as always, gives a lucid performance, but she struggles to rise about the film’s unadventurous inclinations.

Couture premiered at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival.