By the Sea movie review & film summary (2015) | Roger Ebert (2024)

When a big-timemovie star steps behind the camera, there's often the fear that the end resultwill be nothing more than a vanity project that would never have been produced if made by anyone else. Therefore, itcame as a surprise when Angelina Jolie's first two directorial gigs, "Inthe Land of Blood and Honey" and "Unbroken," thoroughly buckedthat trend. Not only did she not step in front of the cameras for either ofthem, they dealt with very tricky material (the Bosnian War and an Americansoldier suffering an array of tortures in a Japanese POW camp during World WarII, respectively), and they demonstrated cinematic ambition and a willingness to grapple withtough subject matter. Therefore, it is baffling to discover that for her thirddirectorial effort, "By the Sea," she has produced a film that issuch a borderline unendurable exercise in vapid self-indulgence that it almostfeels like an exceptionally straight-faced parody of empty-headed starvehicles.

Billedhere as Angelina Jolie Pitt for the first time, she co-stars with real-lifehusband Brad Pitt as Vanessa and Roland, respectively. As the 1970s-set story opens, they aredriving to a remote French seaside town (played by Malta) for an extended stayat a local hotel with a view of the Mediterranean to die for. He is a novelistwho had a promising career early on, but who now spends more time telling peoplethat he is a writer than doing any actual writing. She used to be a dancer, butnow spends her days lounging around, popping pills and acting disdainfultowards practically everything that comes into her path. Roland and Vanessahave been married for 14 years, but after spending a few minutes observingthem, one could hardly understand how they managed to stick it out so long.Frankly, the only things that seem to be keeping them together are theirimpossibly glamourous looks and an explanation for their marital discord they inevitably refuse to delve into until the big emotional climax.

Adistraction from their shared sense of torpor eventually arrives in the form ofLea (Mélanie Laurent) and Francois (Melvil Poupaud), a young couple who arriveat the hotel for their honeymoon and end up in the room next door. At first,Vanessa has no interest in them—or much of anything else—but that begins to change when she discovers a hiddenpeephole in the wall that allows her to secretly observe her neighborsconstantly making love or otherwise gamboling about. After a while, Roland too stumbles across the peephole, and before long, the two of them arewatching their neighbors together—even eating dinner while doingso—and in them, they seem to geta glimpse of the type of couple that they used to be. The mutual peeping evenseems to instigate a thaw in the iciness between Roland and Vanessa for a while, but it all goes bad, of course, and threatens to destroy both couples in theprocess.

This isthe film’s one mildly intriguingconcept—the notion of a couple on therocks using voyeurism as a way of regaining the attraction they once shared—but it is introduced far too late in the proceedings tomake much of an impact, and Jolie Pitt has no particular interest in developingit. Instead, she is more interested in presenting one tableau after anotherfeaturing Vanessa and Roland in various forms of ennui-ridden repose. Thecharacters are beautiful bores when they are on their own and strike zerosparks when they do come together to tear into each other. Early on, we quickly realize that like the film as awhole, there is precious little to these two beneath their glossy exteriors, and nothing that occurs over the next two interminable hours comes close tosuggesting anything else of substance to them. As for theaforementioned big revelation, the explanation for their angst is so trite andgeneric that it comes across as more insulting than devastating.

This isthe first time that Jolie Pitt has directed herself in a film and let it besaid that the actress does the director no favors here. She spends a good chunkof her screen time in a state of terminal languidness and when she does get toher feet, she staggers through the proceedings as though the entire weight ofexistence is resting on her slender shoulders. At no point, however, does shedisplay any of the spark that once made her among the most electrifyingactresses around—she does, however, demonstratethat severe emotional turmoil does not have to get in the way of showing off anelaborate wardrobe and makeup regime at every available opportunity. Pitt comesoff a little better but he is also stuck with a role that is little more than afew random notions that never coalesce into a fully fleshed-out character. Bycomparison, Laurent and Poupaud are far more interesting—to be fair, however, this probably has something to do withthe fact that they have actually been given stuff to do.

“By the Sea” looks beautiful, thanks to the cinematography by ChristianBerger, but the sleek exteriors cannot make up for the shallowstorytelling. I can only presume that there was something about this particularstory that grabbed Jolie Pitt and inspired her to bring it to the screen, butwhatever it was, she has utterly failed to convey that into terms about whichviewers could possibly care. All we are left with is little more than a dourdowner of a film that will leave most moviegoers as cold and indifferent as thecharacters they have been watching. They will want to visit Malta after seeinghow it has been presented here—however, if this movie is anyindication of the sort of people who might turn up there, they might want towait until the off-season.