By the Sea tells the story of Roland and Vanessa (Brad Pitt and director Angelina Jolie Pitt). Roland is a writer who hasn’t written much of value in the last few years. His relationship with his wife Vanessa has been fraught as well. The two head out to a small coastal village in France, where Roland hopes to find inspiration. He instead spends his days getting drunk and suffering the withering looks of his wife, who is growing increasingly impatient with his behavior. The action really kicks off with the arrival of Francois and Lea (Melvil Poupaud and Melanie Laurent), French honeymooners who check into the hotel room next door. Roland and Vanessa spy on the couple through a hole in the wall between their rooms, and rediscover a measure of their connection through becoming voyeurs.
Throughout the lengthy, over-two-hour runtime, the film lays down clues that something terrible happened to the couple at some point in their marriage and that it’s remained a wedge between the two. The film holds off the revelation until the last few minutes of the picture, and in so doing, holds off much of the drama. The rest of the movie is a dull slog. In theory, there are bits and pieces here that should have been made for exciting cinema. But the movie seems to only be interested in the trappings of the era in which it takes place, and leaves little room for actual human emotion.
There just isn’t much that happens in this film. Its first is interminable, the movie growing repetitive in its depictions of how broken this couple is. And then with the introduction of the honeymooners, the movie gets repetitive in implying the temptation felt by the main couple. Throughout it all, little time is actually spent on fleshing out the characters. The film is so intent on keeping their motivations a mystery that it turns them into boring ciphers. There just comes a point where it isn’t worth it to know them anymore.
And when the trauma is ultimately revealed, it’s handled pretty clumsily. It all comes out in one big scene, where the underlying psychology of the problem is basically outlined in awkward bits of dialogue. Whatever interest is drawn from the more outré elements of the narrative is washed away with the simplistic reasoning of this script. The twist lands with a thud, its underpinnings so obvious that the whole thing feels like a waste of time.
The movie is set in the 70s, and it clearly draws some inspiration from the European movies of the time. But this is all facile interest: it’s fascinated with the aesthetics of the time but captures little of the spirit. The movie provides gorgeous visuals, but there just isn’t anything behind them. The acting is mostly all right, though the performances do suffer from the weaknesses in the script. Brad Pitt and Angeline Jolie clearly put a lot of effort into these roles, at the very least. Their performances don’t quite elevate the writing, but they make them somewhat bearable. The film does a disservice to Poupaud and Laurent, who just aren’t given enough.
By the Sea is just devastatingly dull. It apes the aesthetics of the classic European travel film but fails to emulate the emotionality that lies just beneath the stylish surface. The film is ultimately obsessed with surfaces, with the appearance of something meaningful, rather than the meaning itself. When it gets down to its themes, it reveals a complete lack of substance. By the Sea can only be enjoyed for its visuals, but it is just worth sitting through the narrative.
My Rating:
