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It's easy to write off "By the Sea" as a vanity project, but what Angelina Jolie Pitt (as she is billed here) attempts — as writer, director and co-star with her husband, Brad Pitt — is more in line with a languid European film.
The Pitts play Roland and Vanessa, a well-to-do American couple vacationing along the Mediterranean (the movie was filmed in Malta). He's a writer who seeks too much inspiration in a beer glass. She's an ex-dancer who pops too many pills and lays out on the sunny balcony. Their marriage seems to be dissipating, for reasons the movie gets around to explaining eventually.
Roland tries to craft a story from the remembrances of the aged cafe owner Michel (Niels Arestrup), while they both find some spark in their relationship by peeping on Lea and François (Mélanie Laurent and Melvil Poupaud), the randy honeymooners next door.
Jolie Pitt (who directed the POW drama "Unbroken") clearly has studied the Italian master filmmakers, like Michelangelo Antonioni and Bernardo Bertolucci, and strives for that same mix of tortured ennui, casual nudity and sumptuous scenery. The problem is that her pacing is so labored, and the settings so self-consciously serious, that there's little genuine passion at play.
'By the Sea'
Opening Friday, Nov. 20, at theaters everywhere; rated R for strong sexuality, nudity, and language; 124 minutes.