Couture

Writer and Director: Alice Winocour

With the movie Prêt-à-Porter director Robert Altman came unstuck as his famous improvisational approach failed to penetrate the world of high fashion.  Now with Couture writer and director Alice Winocour returns to the stylish environment but with a less satirical viewpoint and a more ambitious target for her observations.

Horror film director Maxine Walker (Angelina Jolie) accepts a commission to make a short vampire film as a curtain-raiser to promote Paris Fashion Week. Whilst in the City of Light she is given a cancer diagnosis and told she needs urgent treatment. Ada (Anyier Anei) is an 18-year-old getting her big break in the fashion industry as both a catwalk model and the star of Maxine’s film. Ada, however, has yet to tell her disapproving father about her modelling career. Angèle (Ella Rumpf) is a supportive makeup artist who aspires to be a writer.

Initially it seems Couture is intended as a satire as none of the three main characters has anything good to say about the fashion industry. Leather –jacket wearing Maxine openly declares she sees fashion as an unnecessary distraction and is working purely for the paycheque. Ada has such serious reservations about her work as a model she is enrolled as a pharmaceutical student but perceives the financial benefits of modelling as the best way of helping her family in Nairobi. Angèle has already been ripped-off by not getting paid for her work in the industry and is bruised by criticism of her writing.

The fashion industry is not portrayed in a good light; inappropriate footwear leaves models with bleeding feet and, despite being new to the business, Ada is given little practical help in her first assignment.  The sole positive example is a seamstress whose dedication is so extreme she falls asleep with exhaustion while working but at least her efforts and skill are acknowledged by her colleagues.

Gradually, however, Alice Winocour widens the scope of her film and it becomes apparent the theme is the need for people to be supportive of each other as recognised professionals may not always help. Maxine’s doctor is so reluctant to be specific about the nature of her illness he leaves it to a colleague to break the bad news. As she waits in a corridor for her treatment Maxine is supported not by a professional but by another patient who offers a degree of comfort. The theme of people mucking in to help out runs discretely through the film; Angèle is the only person to notice, and offer subtle support, when Ada is on her period.

The effortlessly stylish Angelina Jolie seems odd casting for a character with no interest in fashion but, as someone who has undergone preventative surgery for cancer, she brings massive real-life experience to the role. Jolie plays Maxine as someone desperately trying to continue with her normal life in the face of devastating news. There is no doubt that Maxine’s clumsy seduction of a workmate is simply part of the process of trying to pretend it is business as usual and her final dignified acceptance is quietly inspiring and certainly puts the excesses of Fashion Week in perspective.

The other characters are less well developed; with little background information it is not easy to sympathise with Ada’s reservations about her role as a model. The use of Angèle’s writings as a voiceover to comment upon events is largely unnecessary.  Whilst Couture works as a character study it is not very dramatic and director Winocour relies on a deus ex machina to conclude the movie.

Being new to modelling Ada offers the greatest potential to give an outsider’s view on the extremes of the fashion industry. This is not, however, taken-up and Ada and Angèle are given conventional happy endings, one accepting the financial rewards of modelling outweigh the associated problems and the other hoping her first-hand account of the traumatic conclusion of Fashion Week will kick-start a writing career.

Whilst Couture works as a character study a lack of drama and conflict makes for a curiously flat viewing experience.

Couture is available on Digital HD from 20 April. Distributed by Signature Entertainment