Circus nerves, double-dealing, lies, roiling emotions, risible politics and backstage murder are all in a fashion day’s work. (Well, maybe not the murder part.) And part of the appeal of “Rage,” a new film by the British director Sally Potter, best known for the 1992 film “Orlando,” is the way it manages to convey the tense minimalist theater of a fashion show without ever depicting one.

Made on a shoestring budget and starring an array of above-the-title actors, “Rage” (the title truncates “all the rage,” a phrase no one in fashion is likely to have uttered since the 1920s) may ultimately be less interesting for its cast than for its formal conceits and its distribution plan.

Ms. Potter shot “Rage” herself, as if on a cellphone, framing the actors against a green screen in a series of monologues featuring Jude Law (in drag as a female model named Minx); Judi Dench (as a fashion critic who smokes a spliff: as if!); Eddie Izzard; John Leguizamo; Steve Buscemi; and the real-life catwalk star Lily Cole (in a turn as a fictitious model called, of all things, Lettuce Leaf).

The movie’s release comes just after the close of New York Fashion Week, as the fashion carnival moves on to London, Milan and Paris. It will be released first on mobile applications, via the Web video service Babelgum, beginning on Sept. 21, before arriving in theaters soon after.