Review: BY THE SEA, Angelina Jolie Pitt Reaches Beyond Her Grasp To Understand Marital Dischord

For her third feature film as a director, Angelina Jolie Pitt takes on her most ambitious challenge yet: dramatizing the mysteries and secrets of an intimate, long-term personal relationship.

The actress turned filmmaker made her directorial debut with 2011's In the Land of Blood and Honey, which examined the relationship between former lovers who are reunited on opposite sides of a chain-link fence during the Bosnian war. As I wrote at the time, it is "unflinching and infuriating; Jolie evokes emotions honestly, through brutal visual depictions of violence against women. The film treads onto less certain terrain when trying to reduce the war to a conflict between Ajla and Danijel; it's too much of a burden to place on characters to expect them to be effective stand-ins for two warring sides." (More on the film here.)

Last year, she mounted the ambitious, large-scale historical epic Unbroken, about which our own Jim Tudor wrote in part: "The movie holds together well. That said, it's inescapable that without its stunning, vivid and arch cinematography by Roger Deakins and admirably high-end production value in other areas, Unbroken, for most people, would bear little difference from the average made-for-TV emotional string puller." (His entire review can be read here.) I agree with those sentiments, so I wondered if the third film by Jolie Pitt would veer closer to either her first or her second efforts.

Jolie Pitt certainly doesn't make it easy for herself. Directing from her own script, she also takes on the challenge of acting in a lead role under her own guidance. Oh, and there's also the little matter of starring opposite Pitt for the first time since they met during production of Mr. and Mrs. Smith some 10 years ago.

As it turns out, By the Sea sails off into deceptively calm waters that occasionally churn with deep emotion. The path that is charted is restrained to the nth degree, stranding the story and the characters in a mournful, mostly static mood that settles over the proceedings like a king-sized comforter, muffling the dramatic possibilities in the constrained setting.

Dampening things still further, there are few surprises awaiting in the narrative. It's easy enough to guess at the source of the marital problems troubling Vanessa (Jolie Pitt) and Roland (Pitt). It is the 1970's. They have been married 14 years, and no children are in evidence or are ever mentioned. They are sad and quiet. He is a writer who has writer's block and likes to drink, a lot. She does "nothing" besides occasionally read paperbacks, take walks, and shop for groceries; she doesn't like it when her husband touches her.

They have come to a small hotel in coastal France "to get away from it all," as Roland tells barkeeper Michel (Niels Arestrup) and hotel owner Patrice (Richard Bohringer). Michel keeps Roland company while he drinks away his days at the bar, soon taking a compassionate personal interest in the self-described "asshole." For her part, Vanessa becomes fascinated by the newly-married, still very passionate couple who soon arrive to stay next door in the hotel, Lea (Melanie Laurent) and Francois (Melvil Poupaud).

The young couple, constantly talking and touching and embracing and kissing and making love, prove to be a comparison point that is far too obvious for the older couple, who can barely string two words together before dozing off. Things turn perverse when Vanessa discovers a peephole that allows her to watch Lea and Francois in their most intimate bedtime moments. In time, Roland uncovers Vanessa's secret viewing spot.

What ensues is the rough equivalency of a couple watching porn together nowadays in an effort to regain their initial passion. But will it help Vanessa and Roland to overcome their marital difficulties, or fracture the marriage further?

Stripping away the framing device of her first film and the historical stories of her second effort, Jolie Pitt lays bare a fragile narrative that struggles to keep moving forward. Her lead characters are trapped in a tar pit, largely of their own making.

It's a truism that the details of any relationship are best known, and perhaps only known, by the people involved. By the Sea struggles to illuminate a relationship by exposing the frailties of its characters; instead, it only made me glad that I'm single.

The film is now playing in select theaters in the U.S., and will expand further on Friday, November 20. Visit the official site for more information.