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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Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larrain’s visually sumptuous fantasy about formidable Maria Callas begins in September, 1977, with a poignant death scene in her luxurious apartment in Paris, punctuated by her singing “Ave Maria (Desdemona)” from Verdi’s Otello.. Don’t expect meticulously researched details of a traditional biography. Instead, there are fragmentary flashbacks: Born in New York to Greek parents, Maria as a poor, fat teenager in Athens…Glorious ovations at La Scala…Her nomadic nine-year affair with predatory Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis (Haluk Bilginer), who paraded her like a trophy yet abruptly left her to marry widowed Jacqueline Kennedy.
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The Maria in question is not the lovelorn young woman in West Side Story. Not the object of affection in B. W. Stevenson’s hit song. Not the nun turned baroness in The Sound of Music. But all could describe Maria Callas, the ill-fated opera singer who overcame a difficult childhood, became a world class diva and broke many hearts along the way, including her own.
Maria follows the famed soprano’s final seven days in 1977, as she struggles to stage a comeback to her illustrious career amid debilitating health concerns. It’s the third installment of director Pablo Larrain’s “Lady in Heels” trilogy following Jackie, about former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and Spencer, about the life of Princess Diana. Larrain is not a mainstream filmmaker. He is an artist. His set designs and costumes are fit for a queen. His stories are more melancholy and brooding. Emotional without the sugar coating.
The passionately crafted Maria extols the significance of celebrated opera singer Maria Callas in an intriguing introspective way. Director Pablo Larrain’s unconventional biographical drama takes place during the last days of Callas’ life in Paris, when she was 53. She died on Sept. 16, 1977, from a heart attack. This is the Chilean director’s third complex portrait of iconic 20th century women, following Jackie on First Lady Jackie Kennedy after her husband’s shocking assassination, and Spencer, about Princess Diana before she decided to leave her troubled royal marriage. In all three, he reimagined their glamorous life in public and their turbulent life in private, all through a lens that blurred reality. Perhaps Callas is the least known of the three, but this film feels the most complete.
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Of the 278 films playing at TIFF in 2024, according to our calculations, approximately 25% are directed or co-directed by women – a number down from the festival’s all-time high of 45% women-directed films in the pandemic-era 2020 online-only festival. Women-helmed films comprised 36% of the festival lineup in 2019 and 2023. Though TIFF may have to make leaps and bounds to reach gender parity, there are still a number of women-helmed films directed by cinematic stalwarts, up-and-comers, and award winners scheduled to hit the screen at the 2024 festival. With more than 65 films, series, and shorts directed by women, there are many opportunities to take in female-helmed films this festival, which runs September 5th through 15th.
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Eternals is a win for all minorities who never got to see ourselves as heroes. As a child, living in Nigeria, I watched Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on repeat. While I loved it, I remember asking my parents why there was no one who looked like me.
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As the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) expands to include some 26 interconnected movies, more and more superheroes emerge. And this latest entry is directed by Oscar-winner Chloe Zhao (Nomadland) with an emphasis on eclectic diversity and familial inclusion.
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Myth, legend, and theology come together like they never have before in Marvel’s newest entry, Eternals. Academy Award-winning director Chloé Zhao brings her intimate, personal style of storytelling to cinema’s most sprawling universe, introducing new characters and new ideas to the familiar franchise. Despite the action and the visual effects, there’s little to remind us that this is a Marvel movie. it serves as a curious addition to the collection and an exciting peek into the future of the franchise. It is a future more reflective of the world we live in, with grander ideas and new types of storytelling.
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