By The Sea (2015)
Certified: 15
Duration: 132 minutes
Directed by: Angelina Jolie Pitt
Starring: Angelina Jolie Pitt, Brad Pitt, Mélanie Laurent, Niels Arestrup, Melvil Poupaud, Richard Bohringer
KRS Releasing Ltd
By the Sea has been tagged as being a vanity project for Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. But I don’t really adhere to such an opinion.
Since the duo announced the project, it was obvious they were not aiming for a box office blockbuster but a European 1970s-style art house movie.
Jolie Pitt (first time she has been credited as such) follows up last year’s successful Unbroken with a movie that seems to be personal and brims with its sense of individuality and melancholic aura.
The couple play Roland and Vanessa Bertrand who are holidaying in southern France. They are living in a quiet town, which serves as a sort of refuge for them.
Their relationship is strained to say the least. Roland is an author who is suffering from a long-term writer’s block and there seems to be a gulf between him and Vanessa.
Both of them seek solace in different ways and places. Vanessa isolates herself in the hotel where they are staying and Roland tries to write while wiling away his time with Michel (Niels Arestrup), the local barman and a widower.
Vanessa seems to be angry about something. When the room next to theirs is occupied by a newly-wed couple, Francois and Lea (Melvil Poupaud and Melanie Laurent), things start to change for Roland and Vanessa.
Jolie Pitt places herself in a role that in the late 1960s and 1970s would have suited the likes of Elizabeth Taylor or Monica Vitti.
The raw and stark beauty of the Maltese cliff face is brought out with an almost rugged and forceful strength
She veers between weak and strong, lackadaisical and forceful.
The director brings the audience up, close and personal with the protagonists and lets them dissect her almost as if she were placing herself under a surgeon’s knife.
The Maltese environment plays quite a role. The raw and stark beauty of the Maltese cliff face is brought out with an almost rugged and forceful strength. Cinematographer Christian Berger succeeds to mix this environment with the melancholic and inner turmoil of the couple.
The film steps back in time and provides a chic retro atmosphere, all without seeming glamorous. Yet there is an eye for detail which shows that everything on screen was planned, even during the moments of drowning silence.
The stunning visuals are accompanied by a soundtrack selection of tunes that really brings back the 1970s era.
This is not a movie that can be easily pigeonholed as it is so many different films in one. With all its different aspects, it acts as a window into the two stars’ lives.
It seems to be so revelatory… yet is it really that or is it something else?