Miranda Priestly probably wouldn’t tolerate Angelina Jolie’s character from Couture, a new drama set in the world of high fashion that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2025.Jolie plays Maxine, an indie filmmaker who’s been hired to bring her brand of transgressive edginess to a promotional short for Paris Fashion Week. With neither the patience nor the experience for promotional work, Maxine can barely mask her contempt for her new gig — and that’s before a call from her doctor flips her world upside down.
Couture couldn’t be further removed from the glossy world of this summer’s fashion world-set blockbuster The Devil Wears Prada 2. And while that movie makes excuses for the same industry that Couture wants to dress down, director Alice Winocour’s attempt tooffer a ground-level perspective of an industry that has been glamorized for far too long turns out dull, directionless, and mildly delusional.
What Is ‘Couture’ About?
Maxine has a lot on her plate at the film’s start: she’s going through a divorce that has alienated her teenage daughter from her, and most of her attention is devoted to her new movie, a passion project that’s barely a month away from entering production. She also has bills to pay. While she’s risen through the ranks of independent genre cinema and hit a creative peak with a gritty vampire movie, there’s obviously not enough money in the film festival Midnight Madness sections that she has seemingly been dominating. It’s a clever decision to not cover up Jolie’s many tattoos; they give Maxine a necessary edge that communicates more about her than three pages of expository dialogue could. Despite describing the fashion industry as “useless but necessary,” Maxine is determined to perform her duties at Paris Fashion Week and continue her real career with a much-needed financial infusion.
Her problems transform when her doctor informs her that she has breast cancer and that she needs to undergo surgery immediately. As if her disdain for the vanity surrounding her hadn’t hit a boiling point already, Maxine is given a new reason to question the choices that have led her to Paris in the first place.
Jolie is unsurprisingly very good in the lead role, injecting Maxine with emotional maturity that she herself has seemingly developed during the course of a life that unfolded in public. Even when Maxine is hit with the devastating revelation about her health, she doesn’t spiral in the way you’d think. Jolie’s talent and experience are perhaps the only things that save her from falling into the holes that the script insists on digging around her.
‘Couture’ Short-Changes Its Protagonist and Supporting Characters
Maxine isn’t the only character not given the depth she deserves by the script. Couture surrounds its protagonist with a handful of other young women trying to get by in the ruthless field they’ve chosen. The problem is that none of these underwritten supporting characters are given much to do, other than to serve as a stereotype of some kind. There’s a woman from South Sudan (Anyier Anei) who’s handpicked by Maxine to star in the promotional film; there’s also a seamstress (Garance Marillier) who wields her scissors with the seriousness of a samurai with a katana, and a makeup artist (Ella Rumpf) trying to sell a tell-all about the fashion industry. As if Winocour hadn’t overpopulated her movie already, she throws Louis Garrel into the mix as Maxine’s cinematographer, who is tragically reduced to an object who makes himself available for sexwhenever Maxine needs it. Each of them barely have any interactions with Maxine, which leaves you with the impression that you’re watching characters who’ve stepped out of other movies into this one.
They’re also done no favors by a weak screenplay. While a significant chunk of Couture is set in French, the English-language portions can’t help but feel as if they were translated poorly, a situation that becomes more obvious in the scenes that Jolie isn’t involved in.
Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
01
What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
02
Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
03
How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
04
What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
05
What do you want from a film’s ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
06
Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
07
What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
08
What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
A Failed Critique of Two Industries
Couturewants to have its gown and wear it, too. Well-known as many of its supporting cast members are — Raw breakout Marillier is knowingly written into another scene that involves blood — let’s not forget that the film’s protagonist is played by perhaps one of the most famous people on the planet. The decision to cast a movie star can never be limited to their talents as a performer; they bring their own baggage to every role, and that’s partially what filmmakers are hiring them for. In movies like Couture, the parallels are all too obvious.
Couture poses as a rare character drama centered on a middle-aged woman. But while Maxine is a complex character, Couture isn’t a character study. Instead, Winocour (who has made memorable movies about complex women before) goes for a critique of the fashion and film industries that ultimately has little to say about either. Both its halves seem to work overtime to undermine each other. Maxine, on the other hand, seems to exist in a universe of her own, isolated by both the film and her fate. She wouldn’t describe the movie as entirely useless, but it most certainly isn’t necessary either.
Release Date
June 26, 2026
Runtime
106 minutes
Director
Alice Winocour
Writers
Alice Winocour
Producers
Angelina Jolie, Charles Gillibert, William Horberg, Zhang Xin
Pros & Cons
Angelina Jolie delivers an emotionally restrained, mature performance as a filmmaker dealt a terrible blow.
Much of the dialogue is jarring, unnatural, and expository.
The movie spreads itself too thin by introducing more characters that it can service.
It has little of worth to say about either the fashion or film industries.
All attempts at cultural commentary come at the cost of character development.
