“Couture”, which arrived at the Rome Film Festival, brings with it another great performance by Angelina Jolie. Alice Winocour’s film is a curious immersion into the world of fashion, but above all into the life of a woman dealing with a dramatic moment. Between visual and narrative metaphor, however, it relies above all on the charisma of the American diva, with all the pros and cons of the case.

“Couture” – The plot

For director Maxine (Angelina Jolie), life has taken an unfortunately unexpected turn. She lives in Paris, and shortly before fashion week, with a fashion show to which she must give the right impression, prominence, she receives terrible news: she has breast cancer, and the situation is not good. Divorced, with a daughter who is divided between her and her ex-husband in the United States, Maxine now has to decide what to do, how to face that moment. But she is not the only one having to deal with a difficult and critical period. There is Angèle (Ella Rumpf) who works as a make-up artist. Among the most appreciated in the sector, however, she dreams of being a writer, perhaps taking inspiration from that world. Finally there is Ada (Anyier Anei), a young Sudanese woman who, from her dream of becoming a doctor, instead found herself catapulted onto the catwalks as a model. What should they do? Can they really do something? Or is control over your life just an illusion? Meanwhile, clothes, make-up, cuts and threads come together in that show of appearance and beauty.

“Coutore” is signed by Alice Winicour, it is a female story, with which to use an elegant universe desired by everyone (everyone in particular) to offer us not only, or not so much, an inside look at it, but above all to talk to us about life, how to face it, how to react. Strange film, because it pairs Jolie with two little-known actresses, basically creating an imbalance in the way in which the three stories and the various supporting characters arrive at us. However, it cannot be denied that the whole holds up quite well, if only for the way it makes us understand the tragedy of not knowing how to resume the relationship with oneself, how to face what life unexpectedly and cruelly throws at you. “Couture” talks to us about the behind the scenes of that world, about the effort of those who help to sell us that apparent perfection, making this journey, however, a metaphor of the need to rediscover one’s own vulnerability and above all the concept of empathy.

A film with many ambitions but unbalanced writing

“Couture” would like to make these three stories one, but there is a fairly evident difference in length, which undermines the fidelity to this aim of a choral work. Jolie receives preferential treatment from the screenplay, if only because the film itself, the character, follows her personal story known to all. His interpretation is vibrant but measured, always aimed at a realism of representation, trying to keep rhetoric away. “Couture” is a film that offers us a sensitive and profound insight into the concept of female friendship and solidarity, moving away from a cynicism that has often covered the description of that environment. Here then is solidarity in a waiting room, here are two girls who have escaped from their countries who understand each other, finally here is that Fashion, is nothing other than the dream that all of them share of being able to change the reality of things, to exhibit a control that is a placebo, but better than nothing.

However, “Couture” fails to make the leap in quality, to decide what kind of film it really wants to be. In the end, it seems to put the characters of Rumpf and Anei too far aside, to rely totally on Jolie, a classic tactic of those who perhaps haven’t developed their ideas as much as they could or should have. The whole often appears scattered, there are secondary characters, those of Luis Garrel, Finnegan Oldfield, who might as well not have been there, others who would have deserved a little more. You sew clothes, you try to sew your own life, but it is the transition between one element and another that Winocour’s film fails to make cohesive. It remains a different than usual film about fashion, a different than usual film about illness and life, with something of certain similar operations of the late 90s. It’s not a banal film, but it’s not even a film that has found its way, there remain some beautiful sequences, magnificent aesthetics and a beautiful soundtrack. But it is far from what could have been achieved with clearer ideas.

Rating: 6.5