In the frenzy of Fashion Week, three women cross paths in Paris, grappling with the world's tragedies and the questions of their lives: Maxine, an American film director in her forties, discovers she has cancer; Ada, a young South Sudanese model, escapes a predetermined destiny to be thrust into a deceptive universe and French makeup artist Angèle, a small hand working in the shadows of the catwalks, dreams of escaping her life.
Ratings
Curator score: 1.6/10
IMDb: 5.7/10
Letterboxd: 2.86/5
Metacritic: 51
TMDB: 6.4/10
Director
Alice Winocour
Production
CG Cinéma, Closer Media, France 3 Cinéma
Cast
Angelina Jolie, Anyier Anei, Ella Rumpf, Louis Garrel, Vincent Lindon, Garance Marillier, Grégoire Colin, Aurore Clément, Yuliia Ratner, Mona Tougaard, Hunter David, Joana Preiss, Finnegan Oldfield, Nicolas Avinée, Nina Marker, Rebekka Eriksen, Aida Atarssa, Shuting Yang, Mika Schneider, Sofia Lesaffre
Curator Review
Verdict
A visually polished, socially aware drama that pairs the glamour of Paris Fashion Week with illness, migration, and labor behind the scenes. The premise is strong and the setting gives it texture, but the film seems more interested in parallel moods than in fully connecting its characters or paying off its ideas.
Best for
Viewers drawn to fashion-world dramas with a melancholic edge
Fans of ensemble stories about women navigating work, illness, and identity
Audiences who like atmospheric European dramas over plot-heavy storytelling
People interested in films about invisible labor and the cost of ambition
Skip if
You want tightly woven character arcs and clear emotional resolution
You dislike fragmented ensemble narratives
You prefer high-energy fashion or backstage satire
You need a film that fully develops its social themes
Overview
Couture uses Paris Fashion Week as a pressure cooker, setting three women on adjacent paths that never quite fuse into a single dramatic engine. The film’s appeal lies in its contrasts: spectacle and exhaustion, privilege and precarity, beauty and bodily fragility. That tension gives it immediate thematic promise, even when the storytelling stays elliptical.
Worth noting
The strongest material appears to be the lived-in detail of work: the model being shaped by an industry that can feel predatory, the makeup artist laboring in the shadows, and the filmmaker confronting a diagnosis while still expected to function. It sounds like a film more interested in atmosphere, observation, and mood than in conventional payoff.
Bottom line
For some viewers, that restraint will read as depth; for others, as underdevelopment. If you’re receptive to quietly fractured dramas about women under pressure, Couture may linger. If you want the strands to collide with real force, it may feel frustratingly diffuse.
Top Letterboxd reviews
SweelFor (2★) · 319 likes
On cerne une tentative de faire quelque chose d'intéressant, avec le thème de la maladie, l'environnement de la mode, la narration avec plusieurs personnages. Mais la sauce ne prend jamais, les parties ne forment pas de tout, et en résulte un film ni bon ni mauvais, simplement inintéressant.
L'histoire n'explore pas vraiment ses personnages, ou les conséquences de ce qui leur arrive. Ils ne se croisent pas, leurs thèmes sont vagues, pas développés, n'ont pas de conclusion... On reste sur… more
Giuseppe Parrella (2★) · 313 likes
Throughout the whole movie I was afraid that Angelina Jolie would have adopted that poor girl from Sudan.
rachel (3.5★) · 298 likes
honnêtement un médecin me dit « on va tous mourir » en m’annonçant mon cancer je me tue devant lui
sombreimage · 248 likes
Pas Louis Garrel et Angelina Jolie à Darty
Kylo (3.5★) · 206 likes
So many characters yet the French oncologist with a cigarette is the one that stuck with me.