TIFTY TWOFERS: TIFF 2025 REVIEWS
Despite radically different narrative and tonal styles, Couture and Maddie’s Secret offer a rare and welcome look into the unique struggles of being an ambitious career woman who is suddenly, and heartbreakingly, faced with the dissolution of her career dreams, forced to face the vulnerabilities that successful women are forced to hide until it figuratively or literally breaks them. This is what, at least for now, holds strong just above the final glass ceiling: a concrete ceiling that is still much more likely to break women than to ever be broken itself.
By Tamar Hanstke
When we initially popularized the term ‘glass ceiling’ for the difficulty women and femmes experience when trying to advance in traditionally masculine careers, corporate interests were much too quick to declare the glass ceiling ‘broken’; in fact, the very function of the ceiling being glass may be to obscure the fact that there is always another glass ceiling waiting beyond the one that has most recently been smashed. Alice Winocour’s Couture and John Early’s Maddie’s Secret are two films that explore the continuing difficulties women and femmes face when trying to succeed in professional fields, as the past and present traumas of being a woman under an oppressive patriarchal system ensure that there will always be another glass ceiling.
In Couture, Angelina Jolie—in a rare and welcome leading role—plays successful female director, Maxine Walker, at the height of her career, filming a promotional video for Paris’ Fashion Week, and beginning pre-production work for an upcoming feature film. Suddenly, Walker is faced with a pending medical crisis that could disrupt everything she has worked so hard for. Parallel to Jolie’s storyline, we follow a young Nigerian amateur model—played by real-life model Anyier Anei—who is debuting during Fashion Week. Anei’s character, like Jolie’s, also faces difficulties in her career advancement, as she struggles to acclimate to the high-fashion world, mainly composed of competitive, experienced models who do not see any value in taking an amateur under their wings. When she does finally find a supportive group of model friends who, among other things, guide and support her in learning the correct “model walk”, it is a particularly touching moment of female solidarity in an industry where women are harshly conditioned to keep their problems and vulnerabilities to themselves. There is also a third story, focusing on a makeup artist played by Ella Rumpf, who faces the pressure of being the lowest on the fashion world totem pole out of these three women—such as in one particularly stressful situation where one show is demanding she stay to work over-time, even though she has been hired to work another show directly after her original ending time at the current one.
While these three stories occasionally intersect, they are largely discrete, and it is admittedly Jolie’s storyline that lingers the longest in one’s mind after the film concludes. Seemingly drawing inspiration from Jolie’s real, and highly publicized, decision to get a double mastectomy as a preventative measure for her genetic predisposition to breast cancer, her fictional counterpart here is pulled into a harrowing series of impromptu, urgent medical tests to determine if she has breast cancer. The film painfully represents an all-too-common dilemma many people, but particularly women and femmes, have to face: Choosing whether to prioritize their health at the expense of a successful career they have given up everything else in their life to achieve. While Jolie’s director character is certainly privileged in the sense of not having to worry about how to pay for her medical care, she still faces more relatable dilemmas, such as being ordered by her doctor to get an urgent test done tomorrow–and when she tries to ask if she can wait a few days until the end of her video shoot, she is told that she will have to wait months for an opening if she misses this emergency appointment. So, she has no choice but to disrupt the video shoot, provoking frustration amongst her crew; to whom she would not, and truly cannot, confide her medical worries. To be a successful woman or femme in a male-dominated industry is to be indisputably capable and dependable, to the degree that her success can finally overshadow her status as ‘woman’; any hint of weakness, particularly that caused by a debilitating illness, is for that status as ‘woman’ to return to the fore and rewrite every preceding success as a mere fluke.
After several years of reduced film appearances, it is refreshing to see Jolie return in a leading role that is much more complex than the blockbuster action hero characters she is now often remembered for, such as Lara Croft or Jane Smith. While Louis Garrell appears as her working partner and, later, her spontaneous lover, he is always clearly figured as a supporting character in the world of Maxine Walker. When the pair finally act on their growing attraction to each other, there is no certainty of a lasting romantic union; instead, it is a moment of empowerment for Jolie’s character, focused on her sexual pleasure and appreciation of her own body, as she finally begins to accept the reality of her pending cancer diagnosis. While there is still a certain level of detachment between the audience and the film’s characters, ultimately holding the film back from the most masterful class of cinematic character studies, it is exciting to see Jolie challenging herself with roles that, like her real-life celebrity persona, seek to dispel the public’s long-held association between her and her past relationship partners and/or on-screen romantic interests. Instead, she is thoughtfully exploring the still-pressing issue of being a successful and independent career woman who is, nonetheless, always one step away from proving herself to be too much of a ‘woman’ for the position she has fought so hard for.
Maddie’s Secret, while employing a very different style and tone than Couture—more so classic John Waters than French arthouse—also effectively explores a woman facing a potentially life-threatening health crisis at the exact moment she is about to achieve her dream career. I went into this film with no prior knowledge of director and leading actor’s John Early’s comedic work, so I am certain there is valuable context to be found there that I am missing; yet, it is to the film’s virtue that even with no prior knowledge of Early, I was able to find great enjoyment in this empathetic, gently campy exploration of a woman living with a recurring eating disorder. Early brings a sincerity to his performance as Maddie that, despite the film’s often laugh-out-loud satirical takes on today’s influencer culture and the damaging impacts of dieting culture, ensures the film always retains a giant heart on its sleeve.
Indeed, as foretold in the film’s title, Maddie is a rising star in the cooking show industry, yet she carries a devastating secret: A long history of disordered eating, rooted in childhood trauma, that reoccurs during moments of high stress in her life–further motivated by her career as a chef, a common source of stress, literally revolving around food. Unfortunately for Maddie, her eating disorder reemerges while she is competing to be the celebrity chef who designs the next season’s menu for The Bear (and yes, the film is cheeky enough to simply talk at length about the real TV show The Bear, rather than inventing a playful-but-obviously-fictional allusion).
While Maddie’s Secret follows in a long, long history of female-led films about living with an eating disorder, Early commits to an uncharacteristically realistic portrayal of the damage done to one’s mind and body during endless cycles of binging-and-purging, going to great lengths to ensure that the imagery of the film will not unintentionally inspire any viewers into disordered eating habits (a tragic consequence of many well-meaning pieces of media that try to speak on eating disorders, particularly those media texts aimed at younger viewers). And, alongside that grimly realistic look at the consequences of disordered eating, Early also presents a cautiously hopeful look at the recovery process. While Maddie frequently, and often frustratingly, makes mistakes in her recovery journey, the film never casts negative judgment on her, nor shows any intention of giving up on her. To watch Maddie’s Secret is to come to love Maddie, and to gain a multi-faceted understanding of the continued paradox of being a successful woman, in which success means giving up parts of oneself, which leaves one vulnerable, and it is then this very vulnerability that must continue to be hidden away in order to remain successful.
Despite radically different narrative and tonal styles, both Couture and Maddie’s Secret offer a rare and welcome look into the unique struggles of being an ambitious career woman who is suddenly, and heartbreakingly, faced with the dissolution of her career dreams, forced to face the vulnerabilities that successful women are forced to hide until it figuratively or literally breaks them. This is what, at least for now, holds strong just above the final glass ceiling: a concrete ceiling that is still much more likely to break women than to ever be broken itself.
Pink Asparagus 
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