Falbalas (Paris frills)

A talented yet vain couturier runs roughshod over workers, friends, and lovers in Becker’s vividly realist drama on Parisian haute couture, which makes a fascinating companion piece to Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread and counts among its admirers none other than Jean-Paul Gaultier. (Gaultier cites it as a career inspiration. “When I went into that high-fashion world,” he reminisced, “I realized just how real the details and the characters were.”) Becker’s attention to the working-class women whose labor creates the clothes stands out, as do the film’s spectacularly gorgeous gowns and parade of what’s best described as 1940s hat porn.