Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie star in this Italian film inspired drama, revolving around a married couple whose relationship is on the rocks. “By The Sea” is directed by the female of that real life married duo, and it’s story centers around a week in France during the mid-1970s. Vanessa (Jolie), a former dancer, and her husband Roland (Pitt), an American writer, travel the country together. They seem to be growing apart, but when they linger in one quiet, seaside town hotel room, they begin to draw close to some of its more vibrant inhabitants, such as a local bar/café-keeper and a next door newly married couple who share a secret between them that peaks the interests of Vanessa and Roland. This is Jolie’s third directoral effort, and she chose to center it around France in the 70’s because it removed many of the distractions of contemporary life and allows the focus to remain squarely on the emotions that the characters experience in their journey. The movie was shot over two weeks on the island of Gozo, part of the Mediterranean country of Malta, and it made for some truly beautiful cinematography.

My biggest problem with “By The Sea” is in it’s lack of anything that resembles a script structure. For most of the movie, these two characters are bickering with each other without any inching closer of the reason for their conflict. The only thing brilliant about this idea is that there’s an obvious irony to the thought that these two despite being in a hotel room, are miles apart cohesively. It however doesn’t make for the most of entertaining scripts, because “By The Sea” is one of the most boring films of 2015. The film sort of just recycles itself among a field of reptitition that had me begging for something of substance. Style in rich and luxorious shooting locations are great, but when your movie is two hours long, the audience will find themselves reaching for their watches to find out how much time is left. The movie does eventually pick up a little by the film’s ending, involving itself in a dangerous game with the couple next door (Played by Melanie Laurent and Melvil Poupad), but I have a theory on that. I compare it to the audience starving for something to eat, then the movie gives it Mcdonalds to chomp down on. It doesn’t have to be the healthiest option, it just has to be something, and that is why the audience will accept a third act that while preposterous, gives the audience something of intrigue.

I have never had a personal problem with Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie as actors, but their roles in this film are among my least favorite of the year. Pitt is an alcoholic whose solution to every problem that he has with Jolie is to drink away the day at the local pub, and ignore his romantically while on a vacation. Besides this, Pitt has very little guilt within his body. He destroys a bar while under the influence, but goes back the next day like nothing ever happened. All of this pales in comparison however to the loathsome waste of a human being that Jolie’s character is. For someone who wrote and directed this film, Jolie has no problems making the audience hate her. She feels like the main character in the movie based on her on-screen time, but at no point during these scenes does her character do anything besides laying around and sulking. The movie is so shallow that we are supposed to care about her problems because she is beautiful. It is miles away the most conceited performance thatI have seen this year.

Jolie’s presence behind the camera has improved greatly from last year’s “Unbroken”, but this film shows that she may have regressed in some areas. The editing for the film is full of many quick cuts that make the scenes feel like they have been fast forwarded a couple of seconds. It makes everything feel very distracting, and it happens more than just a couple of times. On a good note, Jolie’s lighting and framing for camera angles have improved greatly. If there is one thing that this film has, it’s style in locational presence. Jolie uses soft lighting during the night time scenes, and natural sunlight for the daytime shots outside. It makes for lots of eye-appealing backgrounds that make our characters in the forefront pop in a third dimensional shading. Jolie has shown a lot of promise visually in her projects over the last five years, but her film’s structure and creative sides seem to leave more to be desired. “By The Sea” is a lazy and pretentious offering that feels uninspiring for even the most dedicated of Pitt-Jolie fans. It’s a hollow offering of Italian cinema, combined with American pretentiousness.

3/10