Angelina Jolie Pitt’s reputation as a competent filmmaker won’t be entirely undone by her third directorial effort, “By the Sea,” but neither will it be enhanced.
Making its world premiere Thursday night as the opener for the 2015 AFI Film Festival, “By the Sea” plays like an unconscious parody of “Last Year at Marienbad,” “L’avventura” and any number of other 1960s European dramas about beautiful people having existential crises on yachts and in villas.
What’s meant to evoke longing winds up as merely longueur; Jolie Pitt (as she bills herself here) and her husband, Brad Pitt, star as an unhappily married couple who spend so much of the film locked in wordless, passive-aggressive battle that by the time they start talking to each other, it’s too late to care about them.