Source : PERTHNOW NEWS
Angelina Jolie’s new movie Couture “particularly resonates” with her because it’s about a “renewed desire to live life until your last breath”.
The Oscar-winning actress plays a woman making a Paris Fashion Week runway film while getting divorced and learning she has breast cancer in Alice Winocour’s new movie and Angelina is convinced the movie’s theme of hope and “empathy” will be “useful” to audiences.
She told PEOPLE: “It has something to say that I thought could be useful to people, showing how everyone is dealing with things that make us very human, and that if we can figure out how to live through challenges by leaning on each other and having more empathy towards one another, the better and less alone we will be …
“The film is not about an end for my character but rather about a renewed desire to live life until your last breath which particularly resonates with me at this time in my life.
“I am not sure I was strong enough even five years ago to do this. To be open and trusting to share and be vulnerable again.”
Angelina has previously admitted the cancer storyline was particularly emotional for her because her mother Marcheline Bertrand died from ovarian and breast cancer in 2007 while her aunt and grandmother also passed away after battling the disease.
The actress even wore her mother’s necklace on the shoot for comfort. She told Variety: “I felt very vulnerable. I feel like it’s such a personal film. It felt so private that in my mind, it’s probably the one film that doesn’t feel like a film.”
The 50-year-old actress – who underwent a preventive double mastectomy because she carried the BRCA1 gene in 2013 – knew making the movie would “bring up many personal things” but she found it a “healing” experience.
She told the publication: “I have always found the heaviest films tend to have the most loving sets. There’s something quite comforting about having real conversations and having real feelings with a shared community.
“It was quite healing in many ways because you look at the other faces of the people on the set, because one in three people have cancer, and most everybody’s been in a hospital room with somebody they’ve loved. Everybody on set has lost someone they’ve loved.
“You recognise that life is fragile and time goes quickly, and people pass away that we can’t imagine the world could exist without … It’s hard not to feel very close to a crew and other actors in this kind of a piece.”
Angelina also learned to speak French for the movie, which won her praise from director Alice Wincour, who said: “She really immersed herself in the part and was obsessed with the idea of speaking French, even more than me.
“Her mother was French, so there were many things that were very intimate. She really dedicated herself to the movie.”
Couture hits cinemas on June 26.
