The elegantly dressed woman stands out in the metro, so far from the center, on the way to the Parisian banlieue. Two young men of Arabic origin sit across from Esther (Nathalie Baye), scrutinize the rich lady and want to test her. The coat must have been expensive, whether they can feel it – someone is already rubbing the fabric between their fingers. The attack looks threatening. When it comes to clothing fabrics, Esther is in her element. It’s a wool coat lined with silk, she lectures, not artificial silk, but good quality. Unlike the acrylic stuff that the young guys wear, acrylic stinks: “In your underpants,” Esther explains impassively, “it certainly doesn’t smell of flowers.”
France has voted – and revealed a turmoil that is currently also the subject of various films. In “Haute Couture” the social differences can easily be seen in the clothes: Esther works as a director at Dior and probably only wears tailor-made clothes. Jade (Lyna Khoudri) comes from the suburbs and wraps herself in a balloon-like polar fleece, which she zips up to her chin. Jade steals Esther’s handbag, regrets her deed and returns the bag. This is how the suburban girl and the haute couture seamstress come together.
Jade lives in Seine-Saint-Denis, north of Paris, where the prefabricated buildings are and the crime rate is high. Many people there have Maghreb or black African roots. In the first round of the French presidential election, every second person voted for the left-wing populist Jean-Luc Mélenchon. As entertaining as “haute couture” is, the impressions from this quarter still seem realistic: Jade doesn’t go to school, but isn’t interested in a job either. Her mother is depressed and has been on welfare for ages, her Arab father probably ran away at some point. Hanging out with her best friend, taking care of her mother, stealing cosmetics or a handbag, that’s what Jade’s everyday life looks like.
The director Sylvie Ohayon, who herself comes from the suburbs, approaches the subject with all realism much more optimistically than, for example, “La fracture” (German: “In the best hands”), another current French film that already bears the social break in the original title. “Haute Couture” is a fairy tale between tulle and silk fabrics – Banlieue and J’adore-Dior-Paris should be brought together in a patriotic tale. Esther Jade offers an internship at Dior after the handbag has been stolen. This is not believable at any moment – but that’s the way it is when you mend tears: you have to force the edges together vigorously.
Fabrics warm like Esther’s wool coat, they can be armor like Jade’s polar fleece – or turn a suburban girl into a princess for a moment. Above all, however, tulle and silk fabrics are Jade’s chance for a self-determined life, as Esther explains to her intern. The tailor wants to pass on her craft and her sense of beauty shortly before she retires, and she is also terribly lonely. Jade becomes her surrogate daughter.
“I’m a romantic from the banlieue who was able to emancipate myself,” says the director and talks about her love for France and how hard she herself worked in her youth. In love, you cannot be sure that you will be loved again, she quotes a friend as saying. Work, on the other hand, always gives you back what you gave it.
Two women, two styles of dress: Esther (Nathalie Baye, left) and Jade (Lyna Khoudri).
(Photo: Roger Do Minh/Happy Entertainment)
With this Protestant work ethic, she endows Esther, who has devoted her life entirely to beautiful fabrics and dresses. Nathalie Baye delivers the wonderful sketch of a woman who is headstrong, highly disciplined and passionate about her work, but also pays a high price for it. As “made up” as the story of “Haute Couture” seems, its female figures are as lively and true: the seamstresses in the studio, but above all Jade and her best friend Souad (Soumaye Bocoum), who love each other like a sister. Jade ruffles Souad’s frizzy hair.
But Jade’s internship threatens to tear the two apart: Souad laughs at her friend because she wants to work, she herself will live comfortably on welfare and housing benefits, except for the state – France. “France,” replies Jade, “that’s us.”
So much patriotism might seem mendacious, but as a surprised realization by a suburban youth it seems coherent. In what may only appear to be a naïve way, the director confirms France’s self-image with her film, that belief, skin color and origin are not that important in this country. In any case, the people are not sorted as clearly as it first appeared: some of the Dior seamstresses originally come from the suburbs. And Abel (Adam Bessa), with whom Jade falls in love, has dark skin and is actually called Abdel, but has never seen the suburbs. His mother is a wealthy Arab lawyer.
Haute Couture, F 2021 – Directed by: Sylvie Ohayon. Book: S. Ohayon, Sylvie Verheyde. Camera: Georges Lechaptois. Editing: Mike Fromentin. Starring: Nathalie Baye, Lyna Khoudri, Pascale Arbillot, Claude Perron, Soumaye Bocoum, Adam Bessa. Rental: Happy Entertainment, 100 minutes. Theatrical release: April 21, 2022.