What parts of ourselves do we lose along the way? It's one of the questions at the heart of Couture, Angelina Jolie's new drama about a woman reassessing her life after a breast cancer diagnosis.
In the film, Jolie plays Maxine Walker, an American filmmaker who receives the life-altering health news while working in Paris during Fashion Week. Directed by Alice Winocour, the drama follows a woman forced to confront not only her mortality, but also the choices, relationships and identities that have shaped her life.
Like Maxine, Jolie is taking stock in midlife. When I ask whether the questions she's asking herself now are different from the ones she wrestled with decades ago, she doesn't hesitate.
"Oh, completely," she says, but then pauses: "Completely and maybe I've come around to being a little bit more the person I used to be."
Jolie continues, "I'm discovering something now that my daughters are older. They're talking to me as young women, and I'm seeing what I want for them. I'm seeing what I don't want them to lose and what I want them to hold on to. And it's kind of reminding me what I may have lost."
