Alice Winocour’s Couture opened in New York and a few other cities on June 26. Within a few days it was down to a couple of screenings a day; nine days later it was gone. It’s now streaming.
If this sounds no different from the fate of most foreign films (Couture is a French production), consider this: Winocour’s previous picture Revoir Paris played in the states for several weeks to excellent reviews (I thought it was the best movie of 2023), and the lead of Couture (and one of the producers) is Angelina Jolie who, though her screen appearances have become less frequent, still possesses enormous star power. What do those things mean? That even in the specialty films market, a director’s previous acclaimed work has no leverage against a studio deciding to dump her new film, and that movie stars no longer matter. The latter development has been true for some time. Trailers and bus and subway ads for the big blockbusters haven’t advertised the cast of those films for at some years now, and with good reason. The audiences for the superhero and fantasy epics aren’t going to see people. If that isn’t clear from the fact that the actors in these movies are so often hidden in masks and makeup, it should be clear because there’s no human content in those movies, none of the connection to real-world emotion that gave the best fantasy films their power.
It’s become a given that mainstream movies are lousy right now, product more than movies. It’s next to impossible to find even the kind of modest picture to go to for a reasonably diverting night’s entertainment. But the alternatives, the good foreign and indie films that manage to get released, are through their theatrical run before anyone knows they’ve opened. Of the handful of good movies in those categories I’ve seen this year, only Hafsia Herzi’s terrific The Little Sister and Kent Jones’ lovely Late Fame (currently in theaters) have had anything like a decent run. Rebecca Zlotowski’s Vie Privée didn’t last long, Philippa Lowthorpe’s exquisite debut H Is for Hawk was out of theaters in a week (which suggests there’s no longer any appetite to see film adaptations of books that are both popular and acclaimed) and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s tender humanist drama Young Mothers, zipped through theaters without any help from the brothers’ considerable reputation and lauded body of work.
I think it’s especially sad in this case because Couture is one of the best movies to be released so far this year. It doesn’t have the emotional immediacy or depth of Revoir Paris; it’s a far more elliptical piece of work, yet with an obvious personal meaning for its director and star.
Jolie plays Maxine Walker, an American director of indie horror films who is shortly to start filming the movie that could be her breakthrough. Before that shoot begins, she’s taken a job in Paris where she’ll direct a short film to play during the Fashion Week runway show of a high-toned couture house. Maxine has no sooner landed in Paris than she gets a call from her stateside doctor telling her he’s detected cancer in her mammogram. He wants her to return home immediately for treatment. She explains she can’t walk out on this assignment, leaving it unsaid that such a move, for whatever reason, could bollix her career. Maxine agrees to see a Paris oncologist (Vincent Lindon) who recommends surgery and then after seeing how far the cancer has spread changes his suggestion to chemo, to begin almost immediately.