Alice Winocour’s Couture is a film that holds great thematic significance, which its too-divergent method of storytelling failing to communicate to the viewer. Couture is, at its core, a film about the symbiotic relationship between beginnings and endings. As Maxine (Angelina Jolie) endeavours toward a feature film in her name, she is prevented from its creation by a cancer diagnosis.

Runway model Ada (Anyier Anei) risks losing her first big fashion show casting by spraining her ankle, while Angèle (Ella Rumpf) battles the dissuasion of publishers as she attempts to pitch a book about her life as a backstage makeup artist. The three women are at once submerged in their drive for professional success when the threat of reality intervenes to, in separate ways, attenuate their efforts.

In a sea of overproduced thrillers and superhero films, Couture is a rather calm, unambiguous slice of life that manages to carry with it the charm of self-reflection. But there are simply too many narrative threads in the film, and none manage to garner the viewer’s investment. Winocour assigns to Maxine a fraught mother-daughter relationship, to Ada a lonesome younger brother, to Angèle the artist’s struggle with feelings of inadequacy.

Unfortunately, the director affords almost no screen time to the explanation of these phenomena. While Couture is a decent watch and much needed reprieve from the intensity of recent Hollywood films, it would have benefited from sharper narrative focus.

Feature Image: courtesy of TIFF.