Couture

Couture is a fascinating and often touching drama that examines the lives and professional endeavors of three women during a vital period in their lives. One is a director, played by Angelina Jolie, who has neither had a script offering her this much meat, or been as good, in a very long time. The others are a makeup artist, who works on the project the Jolie character, Maxine, is in Paris to direct, and a painfully young African model, originally from South Sudan, who is experiencing doubts because of pressures at home.

Courtesy Vertical Entertainment

This is a film that has much to offer if one is patient and if one does not expect miracles of plotting or brave new frontiers in storytelling and character exploration. Instead, it is a film best approached as a character piece with some thematic ties. Its one weakness is that the model and artist are given nothing nearly as interesting to play as what Jolie has, but it is also testament to Jolie that she does not allow what could have been a cliché to prevent her from quietly making you weep.

The film has moments of sly comedy — such as when a producer makes ridiculous demands while assuring the creatives that they love the work and believe in everything they read in the script — then moving into beats that will tear at your heart. Depending on your patience or your ability to simply feel, these moments will make or break the film. For this viewer, it helped keep the film afloat when otherwise it kind of floated rather than soared.

Again, this is because the secondary characters and other tritagonists are underdeveloped, aside from generic mean girl, confused ingenue and struggling artist. It is a film that feels as though something important was left on the cutting room floor. It is a rare, otherwise tight film, that could yet have benefited from five to ten minutes expansion.

Courtesy Vertical Entertainment

The film is well photographed, with an unobtrusive score, aside from a brief interlude set in a nightclub. The direction keeps things focused, but perhaps too focused on what ultimately should have been the only real story in the film, that of Maxine. While it is admirable to try to juxtapose the lives of three women, artists at different stages of their careers, and with vastly different life experiences and expectations, it takes far too long for it to all coalesce and even when it does, it just kind of stops. There is the denouement, and then a small stinger and it is over.

What, we wonder, is going to become of the other two? Indeed, it begs the question if this film might have worked best as three short films with each given a chance to grow the stories and characters within it. It almost feels like that, and that is was put together to try to be something greater. What it is works fine but could have been more concrete, more accessible and more rewarding.

Courtesy Vertical Entertainment

The film has a lot to offer. The central themes, about connection and disconnect, about life versus work and about truth versus fiction, are handled well. The cast is uniformly terrific, but this viewer cannot help thinking to how underwritten the model and makeup artist end up being. Had they received more time and more meaningful time, it would be a richer film that would stick the themes in a more rewarding way. What we are left with is a film of potential that wobbles an uncertain landing. Yet the through line of Maxine is enough to carry the emotional weight of the piece, and there are at least three scenes which may bring you close to tears. See this.

Couture is now playing in select theaters.