Angelina Jolie Gets Vulnerable in New French Film
Angelina Jolie is back on the big screen with a project that is hitting much closer to home than her usual Hollywood blockbusters. Her new film, titled Couture, is a French production premiered today and scheduled for release in French theaters on February 18.
While the movie is set against the high-stakes backdrop of Paris Fashion Week, the heart of the story is deeply personal. Jolie plays Maxine, an American filmmaker who travels to France for work only to receive a life-changing medical diagnosis.
During recent appearances on French television, details emerged about how much of Jolie’s real-life struggle is mirrored in this role. The film follows Maxine as she learns she has breast cancer, a narrative path that directly reflects Jolie’s own history.
The actress has been open for years about her family’s battle with the disease. Her mother, Marcheline Bertrand, and her aunt both passed away from breast cancer.
To get ahead of her own high genetic risk, Jolie famously underwent a preventive double mastectomy in 2013.
Showing the Unfiltered Self
This movie marks a significant shift in how Jolie presents herself to the world. She shared on French TV that this is the first time she has felt comfortable showing her intimate self to such a degree on camera.
In a move that has already sparked widespread conversation, she actually shows her real surgical scars in the film. For Jolie, this wasn’t about shock value but about being honest with the audience and other survivors.
By showing the physical marks of her surgeries, she aims to strip away the stigma often associated with mastectomies. She expressed that she wanted to join the many women she loves who also carry these scars.
It is a level of vulnerability that viewers have rarely seen from the Oscar-winning actress throughout her 30-year career.
Connection Through Language
The film also highlights Jolie’s personal connection to France. Her late mother was partly French, and Jolie has always felt a tie to the country.
While she already understood a fair amount of the language before filming began, she admitted that she had to put in serious work to get her French up to the level required for the script.
She worked with coaches to ensure her performance felt authentic to the character of Maxine. Jolie mentioned that speaking the language on set helped her connect more deeply with the local cast and crew. She has often expressed a desire to honor her mother’s heritage, and this film provided the perfect opportunity to do so.
Even though she remains modest about her fluency, her effort to perform in French has been praised by her European colleagues as a sign of her dedication to the craft and the culture.
The Intellectual Side of French Cinema
One of the most interesting observations Jolie shared about the project was the difference between working in France and working in the United States. She noted that the atmosphere on a French set is uniquely intense and academic.
According to Jolie, the French approach involves much deeper discussions about the intellectual, psychological, and philosophical layers of a scene.
In the US, film production can often feel like a fast-paced machine focused on efficiency. In contrast, Jolie found that her French collaborators wanted to dissect the “why” behind every moment. They spent time discussing the scenario’s deeper meanings and the internal state of the characters.
The “couture” double meaning
The film’s title, Couture (or Coutures in France), carries a deliberate double meaning that ties the entire story together. While the world knows the word for its connection to “Haute Couture” and the high-fashion runway shows where the movie is set, the French word also translates literally to “stitches” or “seams.” This refers to both the physical stitching of a designer garment and the medical stitches used to close a wound after surgery.
For Angelina Jolie, the name perfectly captures the theme of the film: a story about women who are stitching their lives back together, one seam at a time.