Genre-hopping French writer-director Alice Winocour describes Couture as a “memento mori,” but its contemplative musings on mortality, trauma and resilience run shallow. Partly inspired by Angelina Jolie ’s first-hand experience with a family history of breast and ovarian cancers for which she underwent preventative surgeries, the gauzy film gains power from its intimate and deeply personal elements of self-exposure. But by embroidering the drama of an American navigating Paris Fashion Week with stories of other women caught in the whirl, Winocour dilutes them all.

Jolie plays Maxine, an American indie horror auteur who, while preparing to shoot her next feature, has accepted a commission from an unnamed fictional fashion house — though the mirrored staircase and couture workshops are

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