Venturing away from the wartime horrors that she's built her directing career around, Angelina Jolie Pitt traveled into the bedroom to dissect a couple's troubled marriage as they try desperately to escape their personal demons in the Euro-noir By the Sea.
An unapologetic vanity project, By the Sea emphasizes Jolie Pitt's keen sense of visual aesthetics. Capturing the flawless beauty of the Maltese coast, she utilizes her surroundings, setting the stage for a tragic story of love and loss.
Jolie Pitt and real-life husband Brad Pitt star as Vanessa and Roland, a married couple of fourteen years who are working through something of drastic measures. And while the film's cast will strike the immediate attention of the casual fan, it proves to be stagnant and overlong, challenging even the most enthusiastic Brangelina fans to be patient. Though the film works hard to correct itself with swift, underlying humor, the overall appeal is limited to those who are able to lose themselves in beautiful landscapes drenched in shades of yellow, orange and khaki.
As the couple begins their co-existence at the sea side hotel, it becomes quite clear that neither has an intimate longing for the other. Roland, a novelist working to overcome a strong case of writers block, spends his days at the local bar. Vanessa, a former dancer, rarely ventures outside the confines of their room, spending most of her time sipping on white wine and popping pills. Together they form a devastating pair, quietly going about their own actions with little thought of the other.
The narrative improves during the back half of the film thanks to our burdened couple's discovery of a small hole in the wall that allows them to watch their new neighbors (newlyweds Francois and Lea) engage in passionate lovemaking. Their reaction to the obvious metaphor to their old lives is intriguing as each finds that the violation of privacy ignites a wealth of emotions, leading to the first authentic interaction the two have shared since we joined them on this unusual journey.
An odd flare of passion erupts thanks to the events in the other room, with Roland and Vanessa using what they see as a level of stimulant to their own sex life, however awkward and detached it is. In the end though, it proves a mere mask for the monster that lies beneath the surface.
Neither this therapeutic element nor the light interaction that follows makes either of them engaging characters, and that is what becomes By the Sea's Achilles heel. We never get to really know (or understand) either of them. We aren't interested in their fate and are unaffected by their struggle. Rather than present a concise, straight forward story, Jolie Pitt presents a hodgepodge of footage that, while giving us a rough picture of Vanessa's past and present, does nothing to make us care or contemplate her possible future. Pitt delivers a strong performance as Roland, giving us an immersive lesson in French in the process. But even his stern yet vulnerable portrayal can't salvage the film's absent pulse.
When we are finally given the full set of information as to why Vanessa and Roland are struggling to connect, no one who has been paying attention is surprised. Painted with a broad brush stroke, Jolie Pitt leaves nothing to chance, ensuring that the cliché reveal is presented loud and clear. The concrete explanation is a bit overdone, providing the final nail in the film's botched coffin.
