Couture

Watched at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival.

I have enjoyed some of Alice Winocour's works like Augustine, Proxima, and Disorder, but this movie might be her weakest one to date. It's clear that Winocour is interested on exploring the characters of women, their struggles, and the fashion business. There are some beautiful and gorgeous camerawork, production designs and good atmospheres explored within the themes and setting. Alongside with Winocour offering some decent directing throughout.

Unfortunately, what causes the movie to prevent it from being good is the hollow writing and the undeveloped characters. With the movie focusing on few different characters, the movie wants to explore about their bonds, issues and their importance, however, the writing doesn't fully take well advantage of it's creativity, which causes the characters to feel underdeveloped and too thin to emotionally engage with. Angelina Jolie and the rest of the cast members do offer great and personal performances to their characters as Jolie was excellent. But it didn't work to save it's characters.

Alongside with some awkward dialogue, the pacing does suffer from some timing and structure issues as certain aspects felt a bit too dull and repetitive.

Overall, there is a great movie somewhere in this, but the writing and characters fails to achieve the success, and it becomes a disappointing experience.

Angelina Jolie is definitely making a come back with films! Maria was remarkable and her performance in this was everything that put the icing on the cake. Her emotions and strong energy made the film for me.

While other characters are somewhat forgettable, the storyline is very well written and in my opinion one of the best films I've seen as of 2025 in the drama genre.