In “Couture,” Angelina Jolie plays Maxine, a low-budget horror movie director juggling a film commission from a French luxury fashion house and being a single mother in the midst of a divorce when she receives a devastating breast cancer diagnosis.
“Couture” writer and director Alice Winocour says she wrote the French and English language drama with the Oscar-winner in mind.
“I needed someone special, someone that would have a special connection with the story,” Winocour says. “Angelina has a lot in common with the character. She’s also a director and she has been through this — not cancer — but everyone knows her story. So I felt like it’s for her.”
The film mirrors some of Jolie’s real-life experiences. While she was never diagnosed with cancer like Maxine, Jolie revealed in a New York Times op-ed that she underwent a preventive double mastectomy because she carried the BRCA1 gene, which sharply increases an individual’s risk for developing breast and/or ovarian cancer. Jolie’s mother was only 56 when she died from ovarian cancer. She also lost her grandmother to the disease.
“Also what I liked with Angelina was that she had this kind of punk spirit and punk energy and raw energy, and it’s really what I wanted for the film,” Winocour says.
