**Spoiler Alert**
Director: Angelina Jolie-Pitt/Starring: Angelina Jolie-Pitt, Brad Pitt, Niels Arestrup, Melanie Laurent and Melvil Poupaud
Angelina Jolie-Pitt follows up her 2015 drama Unbroken with her latest cinematic effort By the Sea; a stale, thinly-plotted, timid and stubbornly bland story about a couple seeking refuge in a French Mediterranean town. The couple seeks escape from marital woes, writer's block and recent tragedies that threaten to sunder their relationship. Jolie-Pitt's third film does little to build on a still budding directorial career that has showed little promise. If her new film can be said to make a statement, it is that she shows no flair for visual composition, storytelling or challenging her actors (including herself) in meaningful ways. She is neither a visualist nor a dramatist. But, that is hardly an impediment to one half of the most popular and glamorous acting couple on the planet. Being one of the world's most famous actresses allows one opportunities to pick and choose projects and write and direct, irrespective of said person's limited artistic range. Many actors step behind the camera and many demonstrate innate, directorial talents. One such actor is French actress Melanie Laurent, who happens to be in Jolie-Pitt's newest film and whose recent Breathe established her auteurist bona fides. One would be hard-pressed to find a wider disparity in talent. While Laurent's film was a psychologically dark portrait of a venomous friendship, Jolie-Pitt's is a shallow drama with dark pretensions. It is all pose and attitude and a little child with ideas too big to express.
The film settles quickly into its story as we see Roland (Brad Pitt) and Vanessa (Angelina Jolie-Pitt) arrive at seaside hotel in the French Mediterranean; their stylish convertible tells us economized traveling is hardly a concern. Within the first minutes of being in their room, which boasts a beautiful view of the Mediterranean, the couple rearrange the furniture to provide Roland a view in which to write.
In the days that follow, Roland seeks his own escape in the local restaurant/watering hole; run by a native named Michel (Niels Arestrup, from A Prophet), who listens to the writer's mopey tales of marital disenchantment. When not lending a sympathetic ear, he helps a drunken Roland to the door or in one instance, expels him for being an inebriated lout.
And while Roland wiles away the hours at Michel's establishment, Vanessa spends her time mostly cooped-up on the hotel room, looking stylishly tragic in her loose, flowing gowns. She never once wears slacks or dresses down the entire film. The suffering with which she copes is articulated in couture elegance. In fact, the way she lolls about the furniture in her gowns reminded me of a perfume commercial. I could almost hear a soothing, female voice say; Suffering...by Givenchy.
Providing some distraction are the sensual female, Mediterranean bodies she sees sunbathing below her room, which also awaken voyeuristic tendencies that become more manifest as the film progresses.
And why all the angst and dourness? What has the couple suffered that would make a moody sojourn on the French Mediterranean necessary?
Jolie-Pitt maintains the mystery; teasing the viewer with visual flashes that are supposed to offer clues but instead just keep us in the dark.
As the days pass; the couple remain alienated from one another in their respective daily distractions. They discover a French couple on their honeymoon have just occupied the room next to theirs and while sitting out on her patio one day, the man; Francois (Melvil Poupaud), and Vanessa make seemingly light conversation though the exchange bears some sexual tension.
Before the monotony of languorous living begins to take hold, Vanessa discovers a hole in the wall connecting her room to the couple next door. After an initial look-see, she begins to peep through the hole regularly, particularly when the French couple are in the throes of passion. I found this development very welcome because one wonders at this point if the film has anywhere to go. I thought; great, some Hitchcockian or David Lynchian psycho-sexual shenanigans to give the film a much needed defibrillation. Vanessa becomes titillated by the sight of French couple's lovemaking and before long, her husband learns of her new hobby and joins in.
Vanessa and Roland become acquainted with the couple while the wife; Lea (Melanie Laurent), proposes some girls-only outings. But though the couples establish a amicable rapport, Vanessa and Roland continue to spy on the couple through the wall.
The voyeurism Vanessa and Roland engage in is supposed to highlight the lack of eroticism and intimacy in their own marriage and though we (and Vanessa and Roland) expect to see something steamy and maybe kinky in their surveillance, they (and we) see nothing remotely erotic. Yes, the couple have sex but it is surprisingly mundane; the kind of love-making your average honeymooners might perform at a Quality Inn. More pitiful is the thought that 50 Shades of Grey offers more lascivious thrills; a damning criticism Jolie-Pitt should find embarrassing.
In time, we learn the nature of the Damoclean Sword hanging over the Roland/Vanessa marriage but the revelation is hardly a surprise, nor is it very interesting. In spite of Roland's earnest efforts to save his marriage, he encounters stiff resistance from his wife and we begin to wonder what it might have been that made her such a catch in the first place. We also wonder if any kind of wife-swapping activity will take place. Being that the story is set in the sexually-adventurous 70s', the idea is hardly out-of-place.
The movie always threatens to go somewhere but it ends up getting in its own way and Jolie-Pitt's script, which she penned herself, doesn't allow anyone to be real. Her characters are just flimsy and shallow caricatures who behave according to vague ideas in her head.
A man seen rowing out of the harbor in the morning and back in the evening is noticed by Vanessa and Roland but aside from idle speculation as to his identity and where and why he goes where he goes, we learn nothing about him or what symbolic purpose he serves.
Always a feeble actress unless she's playing a fairy-tale character like Maleficent, Jolie-Pitt does little to convince us her grief and suffering are anything but skin-deep. She pouts and glowers and looks very glamorous doing so. The other characters are also lazily conceived. The writer experiencing writer's block and a sexless marriage seems like a retreaded plot-line from a Philip Roth or a John Updike novel. Though Brad Pitt is an infinitely more capable actor than his wife, even he can't do much with what little he's given. Ditto for Arestrup and Laurent, who are accustomed to playing characters with more depth.
The story takes its time floundering and when the climax arrives in the third act, it is followed by a very neat conclusion.
The movie, which has vanished quickly from theaters after a very limited-release, is such an eye-roller and a wince-inducer. The biggest cringe bomb is the music that plays over the final scene; Chopin's 24 Préludes, Op. 28: No. 4 in E Minor. Not only is it clumsily deployed, it is a huge slab of seriousness grafted to an unbearably silly film. I guess it's there to show us how earnest the director is and how high-minded she can be.
Jolie-Pitt has made three films and all three have been pasted by critics and bloggers alike. I guess we can give her credit for being persistent. Will she ever surprise us with a deftly-made film or even one that is skillfully competent? I'm not holding my breath. At least the viewer gets to spend some time in the French Mediterranean.
That will have to serve as compensation for anyone unlucky enough to sit through this film.
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