Review: 'Couture' tells of four women in the fashion world, but the stories don't form a satisfying whole

French filmmaker Alice Winocour cannot be accused of not filling her drama “Couture” with plenty of smart ideas about the fashion world and the women on whom everything in it depends. Corralling all of those ideas into a consistently engaging film narrative isn’t so easy, though.

Winocour sets her film in Paris fashion week, with the stories of four different women:

• Maxine Walker (Angelina Jolie), an American indie filmmaker hired by a fashion house to direct the short film that will open the label’s big show. Her work is interrupted by a worrying call from her doctor, and news that she has breast cancer.

• Ada (Anyier Anei), a model just arrived in Paris, whose unique look has prompted the fashion house to hire her to lead off the runway show — and star as a vampire in Maxine’s short film. She’s trying to figure out this strange business, while supporting her family back in a camp for South Sudan refugees.

• Angèle (Ella Rumpf), the makeup artist hired for the label’s show and Maxine’s film — and who also has dreams of turning her backstage experiences into a screenplay. (It’s no coincidence that Winocour makes Rumpf’s Angèle the narrator.)

• And Christine (Garance Marillier), a seamstress trusted with putting together the label’s signature dress, the one Ada will wear down the runway. 

Winocour connects these four women’s stories in some intriguing and visually arresting ways. My favorite came when Christine pins thin red ribbons around a mannequin as a guide, and later a doctor (Vincent Lindon) draws similar red lines with a marker on Maxine’s chest ahead of her MRI. But for every arresting image like that, there’s something trite and predictable — like Angèle’s narration, or Maxine’s romantic fling with her cinematographer (Louis Garrel). 

The attention to detail is also striking. Winocour convinced Chanel to let her film in their atelier (with the double-C logo carefully removed), bringing a sharp authenticity to the movie, particularly in Marillier’s scenes in the workroom.

I would have loved to have seen any of the four stories — especially Ada’s, and also Christine’s — lifted from this movie and explored in a separate film. With this four-in-one approach, “Couture” gives us an interesting tasting menu rather than a satisfying meal.

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‘Couture’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, June 26, in theaters; Rated R for language, some sexuality, nudity and brief bloody violence. Running time: 103 minutes; in English and in French with subtitles.