By the Sea

By the Sea (15)

USA 2015 122 mins Dir: Angelina Jolie-Pitt Starring: Angelina Jolie-Pitt, Brad Pitt, Melanie Laurent, Niels Arestrup

When does the casting of a movie-star duo become a problematic distraction? In the case of By the Sea, such a problem is written into the very heart of the movie. Directed by Angelina Jolie-Pitt, the movie stars her and husband Brad: a slick 70s-set drama that is not just a story of a collapsing marriage but also, seemingly, an odd metafictional counselling session for the Brangelina brand.

That’s a shame because there is a genuinely compelling human story at the centre of Jolie-Pitt’s latest movie, her third as director after little-seen war movie In the Land of Blood and Honey and the curiously dull Unbroken. The narrative revolves around stylishly attired Roland and Vanessa, a chic married couple who rock up in a gorgeous French coastal hotel (actually filmed in Malta) to soak up sea, sand – and misery.

Roland we learn was once a successful writer, now struggling for another hit, although as Vanessa pointedly makes aware: “You actually have to be a writer in order to become a failed one.” She used to be a dancer, until an undisclosed tragedy derailed both her career and seemingly any future happiness between the couple. With Vanessa closed-off, introverted and recoiling from any physical contact with her husband, Roland turns to drinking in the local café, striking up a friendly rapport with widowed owner Michel (A Prophet’s Niels Arestrup, superb as ever).

Perhaps actors of lower or even non-existent wattage would have helped steer the narrative back on course; as it stands, when glamorous Vanessa and Roland walk out amidst the ‘ordinary’ French locals, a slightly unpalatable subtext rears its head: how we would react if suddenly exposed to Hollywood royalty walking among us? The actors’ movie star baggage is distracting but that’s perhaps the point: Jolie-Pitt is seemingly intent on sharing her own relationship neuroses with the audience, the movie acting as the pessimistic flipside to steamy 2005 hit Mr and Mrs Smith, which of course brought the two stars together in the first place.

That’s not to knock the performances themselves. Jolie is an accomplished actress, as the likes of Changeling attest, and she is able to make Vanessa a brittle, unknowable yet compelling presence. Similarly, Pitt is strong as a man whose own masculine bravado is perhaps blinding him to his wife’s problems. Even so, the nagging question remains: are we meant to be invested more in the characters or the lives of the actors playing them?

The movie picks up somewhat with the arrival of next door couple Lea (Melanie Laurent) and Francois (Melvil Poupaud), whose every action can be witnessed by both Vanessa and Roland through a hole in the wall. The younger couple’s amorous antics partially allow our central duo to re-establish their bond through a teasing sense of voyeurism, although the movie is perhaps too preserved in its own sense of languorous mood to fully embrace these blackly comic aspects. Nevertheless, Jolie-Pitt’s direction is evocative and intoxicating, frequently emphasising spacial distance between characters to further heighten the film’s themes of emotional isolation. And those seaside vistas are to die for.

And even in spite of the movie’s not-inconsiderable flaws, it does admirably tackle tricky subjects head on. Can love endure forever? Whose fault is it when a marriage stagnates? And what happens when the former spirit of said marriage is recognised in those of a younger age? It’s certainly no Before Midnight (Richard Linklater’s movie was more verbose yet infinitely more perceptive) but Jolie-Pitt’s latest deserves to be seen as (slightly) more than an overblown vanity project. It’s a flawed movie for grown-ups – but at least it is grown-up.