How Angelina Jolie’s Health Journey Inspired Alice Winocour’s Paris Ensemble ‘Couture’: ‘It Was Quite Healing in Many Ways’
Angelina Jolie admits she was “nervous” filming “Couture.”
The Oscar winner stars in writer-director Alice Winocour’s French and English language ensemble as Maxine Walker, a director of low-budget horror movies who is commissioned by a French fashion house to direct a film for its Paris Fashion Week runway show.
As Maxine balances work, motherhood and her ongoing divorce proceedings, she learns she has an aggressive form of breast cancer. “I feel like it’s such a personal film,” Jolie tells me from London ahead of the film’s world premiere at TIFF. “It felt so private that in my mind, it’s probably the one film that doesn’t feel like a film.”
While “Couture” is not a documentary or a biopic, the drama echoes Jolie’s own health journey. In 2013, she revealed in a New York Times op-ed that she underwent a preventive double mastectomy because she carried the BRCA1 gene, which sharply increases an individual’s risk for developing breast and/or ovarian cancer. Jolie’s mother was only 56 when she died from ovarian cancer. She also lost her grandmother to the disease.
Winocour says she had Jolie in mind when writing the script. “I knew she was connected to the story,” Winocour says. “I wanted to work with her for a long time, and I thought it would be interesting to show her fragility and the woman behind the icon. What I love about Angelina is that she’s in the Hollywood system, but at the same time, she’s a kind of a rebel, a rebel to the authority.”
In one of the film’s most emotional scenes, Maxine is told she not only has cancer, but her doctor advises she undergo a double mastectomy because the disease is so advanced. In another, the doctor is shown outlining the surgical incision lines with red ink on Maxine’s bare chest.
“Of course it’s going to bring up many personal things,” Jolie says. “But I have always found the heaviest films tend to have the most loving sets. There’s something quite comforting about having real conversations and having real feelings with a shared community. It was quite healing in many ways because you look at the other faces of the people on the set, because one in three people have cancer, and most everybody’s been in a hospital room with somebody they’ve loved. Everybody on set has lost someone they’ve loved.
“You recognize that life is fragile and time goes quickly, and people pass away that we can’t imagine the world could exist without. It’s not a singular experience,” she continues. “It’s hard not to feel very close to a crew and other actors in this kind of a piece.”
Jolie also sought comfort by wearing one of her mother’s necklaces in the movie. “I felt very vulnerable,” she says.
But then she adds with a laugh, “I was also nervous speaking French.”
Jolie learned to speak French for the movie, according to Winocour. “She really immersed herself in the part and was obsessed with the idea of speaking French, even more than me,” Winocour recalls. “Her mother was French, so there were many things that were very intimate. She really dedicated herself to the movie.”
Maxine’s efforts to continue living – and working, for that matter – after learning she has cancer resonated with Jolie. “We don’t know how to live through that, how to exist through that, how to not be defined by that,” she says. “But also, there’s the life force that comes when you decide to face it and push forward through life — however long that may be, as none of us are here forever.”
Maxine is one-third of the movie’s storyline. “Couture” is a true ensemble that also follows the stories of Angèle, a makeup artist (Ella Rumpf) with dreams of being a writer, and Ada, a new model who travels to Paris after being discovered in South Sudan.
South Sudanese model Anyier Anei makes her acting debut as Ada. Anei says she “immediately felt imposter syndrome” when she was offered the role, but Jolie helped her overcome the nerves and worry. “My country has been at war since I was born, and I think one of the few activists and humanitarians who speak about what’s truly going on in South Sudan is always Angelina Jolie,” Anei says. “So meeting her on the first day was truly an honor because there was so much I had to learn from her, and it was an incredible experience, because she was very kind, and she was very patient. We spoke about Sudan in the first conversation we had, and I very easily felt like I belonged. It made the experience much easier for me.”
Winocour asked Anei not to take acting lessons before they started shooting. “She said that she wanted me to be as natural as I was, and that going to acting school or taking classes would take the naturality away from what she was looking for and what she saw during the casting,” Anei says.
Like the stitches that hold couture pieces together, all three main characters are threaded together by the fashion world. Each is trying to figure out what they want and need to survive, what will keep them from falling apart. “To me, it’s as if those three women are one woman at different ages, one in her 20s, the other in her 30s, and Angelina in her 40s,” Winocour says.
“It’s about women’s bodies and lives and the effect we have on each other,” Jolie says. “I think there’s something in that that moves me, in it that we come from different places and we’re kind of sewn together in this fabric of humanity, and in this case, the sisterhood of these women.”
“Couture” also marks the first time Chanel allowed a fictional film to be shot in its Paris showroom and atelier.
“They let me go backstage of all of their shows, to meet seamstresses in the atelier, the workers of fashion,” Winocour says. “In most fashion movies, it’s usually from the point of view of an artistic director, who are mostly men. I thought it was very interesting to have the female point of view and the point of view from the working-class heroes.”
As a model, Anei has walked for Chanel, Dior, Fendi, Versace, Saint Laurent and Gucci and appeared in campaigns for Balmain and Rhode. “When you hear fashion, you think of money, you think of glory, you think of beauty, but it’s the people who are at the back who put together those stitches, and the people who do the work behind the scenes that bring together what fashion truly is,” she says. “That’s the base of truly what fashion is.”
The Oscar winner stars in writer-director Alice Winocour’s French and English language ensemble as Maxine Walker, a director of low-budget horror movies who is commissioned by a French fashion house to direct a film for its Paris Fashion Week runway show.
As Maxine balances work, motherhood and her ongoing divorce proceedings, she learns she has an aggressive form of breast cancer. “I feel like it’s such a personal film,” Jolie tells me from London ahead of the film’s world premiere at TIFF. “It felt so private that in my mind, it’s probably the one film that doesn’t feel like a film.”
While “Couture” is not a documentary or a biopic, the drama echoes Jolie’s own health journey. In 2013, she revealed in a New York Times op-ed that she underwent a preventive double mastectomy because she carried the BRCA1 gene, which sharply increases an individual’s risk for developing breast and/or ovarian cancer. Jolie’s mother was only 56 when she died from ovarian cancer. She also lost her grandmother to the disease.
Winocour says she had Jolie in mind when writing the script. “I knew she was connected to the story,” Winocour says. “I wanted to work with her for a long time, and I thought it would be interesting to show her fragility and the woman behind the icon. What I love about Angelina is that she’s in the Hollywood system, but at the same time, she’s a kind of a rebel, a rebel to the authority.”
In one of the film’s most emotional scenes, Maxine is told she not only has cancer, but her doctor advises she undergo a double mastectomy because the disease is so advanced. In another, the doctor is shown outlining the surgical incision lines with red ink on Maxine’s bare chest.
“Of course it’s going to bring up many personal things,” Jolie says. “But I have always found the heaviest films tend to have the most loving sets. There’s something quite comforting about having real conversations and having real feelings with a shared community. It was quite healing in many ways because you look at the other faces of the people on the set, because one in three people have cancer, and most everybody’s been in a hospital room with somebody they’ve loved. Everybody on set has lost someone they’ve loved.
“You recognize that life is fragile and time goes quickly, and people pass away that we can’t imagine the world could exist without. It’s not a singular experience,” she continues. “It’s hard not to feel very close to a crew and other actors in this kind of a piece.”
Jolie also sought comfort by wearing one of her mother’s necklaces in the movie. “I felt very vulnerable,” she says.
But then she adds with a laugh, “I was also nervous speaking French.”
Jolie learned to speak French for the movie, according to Winocour. “She really immersed herself in the part and was obsessed with the idea of speaking French, even more than me,” Winocour recalls. “Her mother was French, so there were many things that were very intimate. She really dedicated herself to the movie.”
Maxine’s efforts to continue living – and working, for that matter – after learning she has cancer resonated with Jolie. “We don’t know how to live through that, how to exist through that, how to not be defined by that,” she says. “But also, there’s the life force that comes when you decide to face it and push forward through life — however long that may be, as none of us are here forever.”
Maxine is one-third of the movie’s storyline. “Couture” is a true ensemble that also follows the stories of Angèle, a makeup artist (Ella Rumpf) with dreams of being a writer, and Ada, a new model who travels to Paris after being discovered in South Sudan.
South Sudanese model Anyier Anei makes her acting debut as Ada. Anei says she “immediately felt imposter syndrome” when she was offered the role, but Jolie helped her overcome the nerves and worry. “My country has been at war since I was born, and I think one of the few activists and humanitarians who speak about what’s truly going on in South Sudan is always Angelina Jolie,” Anei says. “So meeting her on the first day was truly an honor because there was so much I had to learn from her, and it was an incredible experience, because she was very kind, and she was very patient. We spoke about Sudan in the first conversation we had, and I very easily felt like I belonged. It made the experience much easier for me.”
Winocour asked Anei not to take acting lessons before they started shooting. “She said that she wanted me to be as natural as I was, and that going to acting school or taking classes would take the naturality away from what she was looking for and what she saw during the casting,” Anei says.
Like the stitches that hold couture pieces together, all three main characters are threaded together by the fashion world. Each is trying to figure out what they want and need to survive, what will keep them from falling apart. “To me, it’s as if those three women are one woman at different ages, one in her 20s, the other in her 30s, and Angelina in her 40s,” Winocour says.
“It’s about women’s bodies and lives and the effect we have on each other,” Jolie says. “I think there’s something in that that moves me, in it that we come from different places and we’re kind of sewn together in this fabric of humanity, and in this case, the sisterhood of these women.”
“Couture” also marks the first time Chanel allowed a fictional film to be shot in its Paris showroom and atelier.
“They let me go backstage of all of their shows, to meet seamstresses in the atelier, the workers of fashion,” Winocour says. “In most fashion movies, it’s usually from the point of view of an artistic director, who are mostly men. I thought it was very interesting to have the female point of view and the point of view from the working-class heroes.”
As a model, Anei has walked for Chanel, Dior, Fendi, Versace, Saint Laurent and Gucci and appeared in campaigns for Balmain and Rhode. “When you hear fashion, you think of money, you think of glory, you think of beauty, but it’s the people who are at the back who put together those stitches, and the people who do the work behind the scenes that bring together what fashion truly is,” she says. “That’s the base of truly what fashion is.”