Angelina Jolie’s health recovery muses Alice Winocour’s ‘Couture’

Angelina Jolie was an inspiration for Alice Winocour’s new drama film, which eventually made Jolie “nervous” while filming.

The iconic A-list actor stars as Maxine Walker in Winocour’s French and English language ensemble, Couture.

Jolie’s character is a director of a low-budget horror movie who is trusted by a French fashion house to direct a film for its Paris Fashion Week runway show.

Whilst Maxine struggles to balance work, motherhood, and her ongoing divorce drama, she learns that she has been diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer.

“I feel like it’s such a personal film,” Jolie told Variety in 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.”

Although Couture is neither a documentary nor a biopic, the drama resonates with Angelina Jolie’s personal experiences. In 2013, she revealed through a New York Times op-ed that she had undergone a preventive double mastectomy after discovering she carried the BRCA1 gene, which significantly raises the risk of breast and ovarian cancer.

Her family history deeply shaped Jolie’s decision. Her mother passed away from ovarian cancer at the age of 56, and her grandmother also lost her life to the same disease.

Therefore, Winocour had Jolie in mind while she was working through the script.

“I knew she was connected to the story,” Winocour said. “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 rebel — a rebel to authority.”

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