Female Film Critics 24/375
Fashion often feels far from fabulous in writer/director Anna Winocour’s Paris-set drama Couture, which takes a frank look at what goes on behind the scenes in the world of impossibly chic designer dresses and elite runway models. But as it weaves together the stories of three different women — an up-and-coming director, a brand new model, and a make-up artist with big dreams — it creates a memorable fabric of emotion and experience.
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Fashion is high minded art and serious business to some; frivolous to others. The always interesting French screenwriter and director Alice Winocour’s drama Couture balances both. Much like life, the story ambles from ordinary, even mundane travails, to matters of life and death. Couture follows three women from different cultures who converge in Paris for fashion week. Nearly all the film’s substantial scenes take place between the women. Their disparate lives may intersect only briefly but Couture is most effective when subtly revealing a world where survival often depends on fleeting connections and unspoken understandings.
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Couture is more about the human beings of the fashion world rather than the fashion itself – and that’s what makes it so interesting even though it moves slowly and all of its elements don’t always work together. It’s refreshing to see that, even in an industry as glamorous as fashion, people are still just people, trying to do their jobs, sometimes messing up and often getting help from others.
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It feels like a precious gift, the latest film from French director Alice Winocour, a delicately constructed journey through trauma and recovery that cuts like a knife and soothes like a hug, somehow, miraculously, managing both bundles of feeling at the same time.
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Starring Virginie Efira as Mia, a Parisian woman who survives a deadly terrorist attack in a crowded bistro, Alice Winocour’s haunting drama Revoir Paris explores the lingering impact of devastating trauma. As Mia struggles to remember the details of what happened to her and the other victims that fateful night, she must come to terms with the fact that her life now has distinct “before” and “after” portions — and decide what that means for her future.
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Alice Winocour’s beautifully rendered Revoir Paris is a compelling drama centering on Mia (Virginie Efira), a woman who is trying to process a calamity and recover from the trauma of having witnessed and survived a terrorist attack in a popular — hence crowded– Paris bistro. The film is a fascinating study of grief that focuses on how to recover from trauma and move on. Director Alice Winocour, who co-wrote the script, and the wonderful Virginie Efire, who plays Mia, do a brilliant job of engaging viewers in timely contemplation about the shattering consequences of terrorism — on those who survive.
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Alice Winocour is entirely grounded in all senses of the word: the mundanity of the rigor of the astronaut training is on the same par with the tedium of the sexism Sarah faces, especially from Mike Shannon (Matt Dillon), the American commander of the international mission. But just because it’s all routine doesn’t mean it’s not engrossing in its own quiet way.
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Alice Winocour’s drama Proxima may be about a woman who’s getting ready to head to space, but it’s the very earthly ties that bind us to this planet — and to each other — that are at the heart of this thoughtful film. Starring Eva Green as French astronaut Sarah Loreau, Proxima explores the intersection of professional ambition and motherhood in a way that will ring true for anyone who’s ever had to balance personal and professional demands.
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Eva Green gives an absolutely stellar performance in Alice Winocour’s exceptional film. Both Green and Winocour wear Proxima‘s feminist credentials lightly, however. Neither screenplay nor performance act as soapbox; they don’t need to. The message is woven into the fabric of the film, which benefits from some beautiful, textural cinematography from Georges Lechaptois whose camera often rests on intimate moments. That the film’s power lies in these small interactions is indicative of a writer/director at the top of her game.
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The French sci-fi drama Proxima, is among the several notable space-travel features that have blasted off in this decade. But this is the first to have a female in the director’s chair. Namely, Alice Winocour, who uses down to earth human emotion and family issues for the film’s rocket fuel.
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