There’s something beating beneath the many layers of fashion in Couture, but it rarely rises above its Paris-set decadence. All the ingredients are there for exploring the cruelty of what comes with women breaking into and holding onto fame. There’s an immigrant model distancing herself from her family, a makeup artist failing to sell her writings, and a film director stricken with breast cancer amid her most passionate project. But rather than watching all these characters form a rich tapestry of their turmoil, their isolation is so compartmentalized that they might as well exist on opposite sides of the globe rather than be localized to France.

Angelia Jolie is by far the highlight of this film for taking on a more somber and subdued role. She plays the aforementioned director, Maxine Walker, struggling to get her vampire movie off the ground. Amid facing scrutiny over shots not looking right and the fangs looking too pointy, she has just received the worst news about a breast cancer diagnosis. Her busy lifestyle takes an existential turn when she’s thrown off her routine, but not by much, given how she keeps her diagnosis concealed. The insecurity about facing surgery makes her more open to sex with a coworker, but in a manner so upfront that it’s about as passive as a day on set. The few moments when Jolie reveals the frailty and fear in her character are stronger than the smooth manner in which everything is concealed. She’s avoiding discussing her health, and the movie avoids any drama in this discovery.

Appearing in Maxine’s film is the immigrant Ada (Anyier Anei), arriving in Paris for modeling jobs. Although tossed into the deep end, she manages to connect with the other models she rooms with. There’s plenty that makes Ada interesting, from her troubled life at home to her reluctance to model given her education and interests. But even the loneliness of the city and health concerns amid model shoots do little to deter her path, keeping her bleeding thighs and sore ankle firmly behind closed doors. Sharing some of her plight is the overworked makeup artist Angèle (Ella Rumpf), but there’s no time for connections. In addition to running across the city for different gigs that run into each other, she’s also trying and failing to sell her writing based on her real-life experiences in the field. Much like Maxine, she faces scrutiny from men who don’t find her writing interesting or believable, even though it draws on real life.

Oddly enough, that same criticism applies to this film. It is entirely believable that these three women would have all these problems and shut themselves off from each other, but how interesting can that be when their plights are so compartmentalized? There are three good movies within this multi-arc drama, but the film never fully develops either of them or plays out the more engaging scenes. Consider how existential Maxine becomes when learning of her cancer diagnosis and proceeds to get drunk and have sex with her co-worker Anton (Louis Garrel). There’s a weirdly clinical approach she takes, directly asking Anton if he wants to have sex, giving him many acceptable routes for how to make that happen. Revelations about her surgical markings never arise in their makeout session, and a post-sex scene of them commenting on the details of a horror movie is cut off before some chemistry can form. It’s a one-night stand far too casual to be compelling, narrowly avoiding any dramatic developments as though it were traversing a minefield.

Couture merely scratches the surface of its fashion critique, loaded with fine performances, locked in underdeveloped character arcs. The movie always feels like it’s missing something as it sinks deeper into personal problems that remain so buried in frustrating quiet. Even the artificial allure of intricate fashion shoots and horror filmmaking is presented more as distant background noise amid the dread and hustle. What could’ve been a revealing microcosm of fame’s fragility for women of various ages turns into a mess more mesmerized by the seams of its own decadent design.

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