Angelina Jolie is back on the big screen, with perhaps her most vulnerable and delicate performances to date, in “Couture.”
It sauntered into cinemas across the Kingdom in early July, coinciding with Paris Haute Couture Week, after premiering last year at the Toronto International Film Festival and earlier this year in France, then the US.
Directed by Alice Winocour, Jolie plays US-based Maxine Walker, who takes a freelance job in France directing a horror film during the frenzy of Paris Fashion Week.
Upon arriving in the French capital, while engulfed in a flood of work and fake fog, Maxine receives an unexpected call that causes her to experience real-life-horror —something so many women receive every day — a diagnosis of breast cancer.
She has to choose between chasing her biggest career break to date and with prioritizing her own private battle through fighting a devastating disease.
Her life is finally getting on track until it flies off the rails completely.
She crosses paths with Ada, a rising South Sudanese model plucked from poverty and pharmacy school; Angele, a makeup artist who secretly longs to become a writer; and pink-tinged-haired seamstress, Christine.
A fun fact is that this is the first fictional film allowed to be filmed inside cashion house Chanel’s Paris showroom and atelier fashion house.
Left to right: French actress Aurore Clement, French actress Garance Marillier, French-British actor Finnegan Oldfield, Soudanese actress and model Anyier Anei, French screenwriter and film director Alice Winocour, US actress Angelina Jolie, Swiss actress Ella Rumpf, French actor Louis Garrel, French actor Gregoire Colin and French actor Vincent Lindon pose ahead of a screening of the film "Coutures" at the Pathe Palace cinema, in Paris on February 9, 2026. (AFP)
For something to be considered couture in fashion, each piece has to be unique and truly one-of-a-kind. Garments require hundreds of hours to make; heavily involving hand-stitching, hand-applied embroidery, and multiple physical fittings to ensure a flawless fit.
In a poetic way, the title of the film leads us to the various women depicted within. Each of them is couture.
While scarce on screen, Christine’s character serves as the symbolic spool to which the film’s themes of labor, sacrifice, and womanhood come together in a ball. She is tasked with hand-making the finale gown of the runway show — the very dress that the model Ada wears.
In a striking parallel, the red lines that Christine draws on her mannequin’s bust to map out the dress fabric mirrors the pre-surgery medical lines the oncologist draws on Maxine’s body to prepare her for her mastectomy.
It showcases the literal blood, sweat, and tears of driven, working-class women — each with a story none of us fully know.
The film heavily mirrors Jolie’s own journey; as her real mother died from breast cancer in 2007, and Jolie herself famously underwent a preventive double mastectomy in 2013, after which she penned an intimate op-ed for the New York Times.
The issue I had with the film is that we did not spend enough time with each of the other characters to fully understand them or their journey.
The only one that has a sort of resolution at the end is Maxine. But perhaps that is the most realistic ending of all — we really don’t know what happens to those who walk in and out of our lives. Most people do not have a neat narrative that strings together all the shiny strands within them to form a chic couture gown. Most people just fold away from us, and us from them.
