Just because two people embark on an extended vacation to one of the most beautiful places in the world doesn’t mean that happiness is guaranteed to come with them. Such is the tale of Vanessa (Angelina Jolie – Girl, Interrupted, Changeling) and Roland (Brad Pitt – Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Moneyball), a married couple of 14 years who set out for a remote French seaside town for some quiet time together in a local hotel that offers a stunning view of the landscape it sits next to, which happens to be the Mediterranean Sea. He’s a writer looking for inspiration. She’s a retired ex-dancer. But, unfortunately, all is not well and has not been well for quite some time in the Angelina-directed (Unbroken) By the Sea.
This movie received criticism from critics (35%) and audiences (29%) alike on Rotten Tomatoes, and I’ll be the first to admit that this wasn’t a movie that would do very well in the theaters. However, I will agree with many statements about By the Sea. It’s slow. It’s methodical. It’s predictable. It’s melancholy. But it’s also a deep character study of two people who look like they have everything going for them on the exterior but, internally, are dying. They share the same burden but have been unable to work through it or even talk about it with each other. I won’t say what this heartache is, but you’ll figure it out early on in this film, and if you don’t, it’ll be displayed in the film’s finale.
Vanessa and Roland are beautiful-looking people who seemingly have the world at their fingertips. They can take this vacation with no time limit on when it will end because he is a highly successful writer and is retired. They can both drink and smoke throughout the day. He can write. She can do whatever it is she likes to do. At night, they can have delicious meals prepared for them. They can have it all. Yet, they are two of the loneliest, most unhappy people you’ll meet onscreen all year. The always impressive Jolie portrays Vanessa as a sullen, distraught, downtrodden middle-aged woman who has her stuff together on the exterior. Yet, inside, she is crying out with shame and anger. She spends her days alone in the couple’s exquisite motel room because she is too morose to do anything else. In more scenes than not, she is either popping prescribed medication, or her bottle of pills isn’t more than an arm’s length away. She seems to hold so much disdain for people other than her husband that she can barely even manage to converse with them.
Roland handles his emotions differently. While he is as sad and angry as his wife, he chooses to interact with society. He goes out to write each day, but he returns to the room after doing very little. Instead, he drinks his days (and sometimes nights) away with the local town folk. Sometimes, he drinks that perfect amount; sometimes, he drinks too much and does things he and we would not like him to do. But for the most part, he is an affluent, affable person who may not be loving his life at the moment but is still someone you’d want to have a conversation with over a gin and tonic or a glass of wine. His main problem is not the lack of writing success with his current novel but his inability to communicate with his wife, whom he loves. He feels he’s become a burden to her and doesn’t know how to deal with that. So, he drinks his days away as an alternative.
One day, Vanessa discovers a peephole that peers into the room of their neighbors, a young couple on their honeymoon. Lea (Mélanie Laurent – Inglourious Basterds, Beginners) and Francois (Melvil Poupaud) spend as much time with their clothes off in bed as they do everything else on their honeymoon combined, and Vanessa is there to watch it. Perhaps she sees a younger version of herself in Lea, whom she later befriends, or has a lustful curiosity in Francois. In either case, when Roland is away, and the couple is in their room, she pushes away the furniture, pulls out the tattered piece of cloth that clogs up the peephole and gazes at the two young lovers. This is not a two or three-time occurrence. Jolie, in her first role in front of and behind the camera simultaneously, drives this home with her constant return to this spot just beyond the foot of her bed. Never one to say the words in her head, we are left to imagine Vanessa’s intent along with her.
Vanessa and Roland yearn to have a conversation they need to have, but neither wants to have. Knowing how volatile Vanessa can be, he has to carefully pick and choose when to talk to her and how to talk to her. The two hours lead to this predictable encounter that can’t hold a candle to the fire created in other movies about a similar topic. You would think that actors with the resumes of Jolie and Pitt (who were newlyweds at the time of this movie) would set us up for this massive tear-jerker of a climax. But it doesn’t. It’s hastily done, especially considering the 105 minutes we have already put into this 120-minute movie. There is an underlying animosity between these two characters that might be misconstrued towards one another rather than any specific circumstance because of how much separation appears between them. While they don’t yell, scream, kick, or punch, there is anger here. There is the withholding of other emotions because the anger is so rich, honest, and intense. They are blaming each other for events and situations beyond their control.
A large audience out there will think that this movie is a complete bore or a waste of time. I wasn’t one of those people. Yes, it is slow. Yes, it is fairly predictable. No, the end is not worth the long buildup it takes us to get there. But the performances of Jolie and Pitt are so rich that you almost want to watch these two characters individually and together, if for no other reason than to be glad that your life isn’t as off the rails as it is for this couple. It’s not the most likable of couples; it’s a couple we still want to see come out clean on the opposite end of this film, mainly because neither one of them does anything abhorrent when they are in their right minds. This couple is hurting, and we don’t want to see them hurting if, unfortunately, they are hurting for no other reason than that they are despondent Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. But I could see how the dreariness might soak up any potential hope we have for this couple long before their long-awaited, anticipated attempt at reconciliation even begins to occur.
Plot 7/10
Character Development 7.5/10
Character Chemistry 8.5/10
Acting 9/10
Screenplay 7/10
Directing 7.5/10
Cinematography 9/10
Sound 7/10
Hook and Reel 7/10
Universal Relevance 7/10
76.5%
C+
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