COUTURE BY ALICE WINOCOUR: PARIS FASHION WEEK HAS NEVER FELT THIS MELANCHOLIC

I have never been to Paris during Fashion Week, but I guess it feels suspended between fantasy and exhaustion. And amid that chaos, Alice Winocour presents a movie that shows how glamour and grief begin to blur into one another. Even when someone’s entire life is collapsing behind closed doors, the world still expects everything to keep moving forward. In ‘Couture’, that contradiction becomes quietly devastating.

The film is a delicate meditation on female intimacy. In the middle of Paris Fashion Week, the lives of three women intertwine as they deal with personal struggles and the weight of the world around them. Maxine (Angelina Jolie), an American film director in her forties, is diagnosed with cancer; Ada (Anyier Anei), a young model from South Sudan, escapes her future only to end up in a superficial environment; and Angèle (Ella Rumpf), a French makeup artist working backstage at the fashion shows, dreams of starting a different life.

Angelina Jolie, whose French carries such effortless magnetism, shows something deeply human in the way she approaches her character. I really liked that the film never turns it into cheap drama. Instead, it focuses on how strange and lonely it feels to keep living a normal life after receiving a cancer diagnosis. Maxine keeps working, keeps moving through Fashion Week to present her film, even when everything inside her seems exhausted. Jolie plays that emotional weight so well.

Visually, the film is gorgeous. The fashion show sequence is obviously a highlight, but even the smaller scenes feel beautiful and carefully made. Winocour creates this soft, dreamy atmosphere that makes the whole movie feel almost floating at times. I also loved the final sex scene because of what it means for Maxine’s character. It is filmed in such a tender way, and it feels more about intimacy and being alive than anything else.

The music choices are amazing too. There is a really good party scene with Charli XCX playing, and the soundtrack in general is incredible. Of course, having Anna von Hausswolff involved already tells the music is going to be special. It adds so much to the film’s emotional and dreamlike feeling.

If the movie has a weakness, it may be that some supporting characters could have had a deeper development, but honestly the film still worked really well for me. Anyier Anei and Ella Rumpf offer good performances, and Alice Winocour seems less interested in traditional storytelling than in emotional texture, in observing creative women finding solace in one another amid uncertainty.

Couture is wildly underrated. I know I am much higher on it than most people seem to be, but it really stayed with me. Alice has crafted something quietly unforgettable. And that final scene… Such an emotional ending, almost enough to bring tears. It closes the movie with acceptance: the understanding that beauty and grief often exist in the same breath.

Words by @joaquinxbc