Vanessa and Roland are beautiful, artistic, and rich enough for an indefinite stay in the French Mediterranean, but By the Sea beckons you to feel sorry for them. The arthouse effort directed by Angelina Jolie Pitt—who also stars as Vanessa, alongside husband Brad as Roland—has flawless style. See: the YSL gradient sunglasses, the moldings in their hotel, the views, the car, and the clothes—she in layered silks, he in rakish chapeau.
As a style piece, Sea is a comely '60s/'70s Euro throwback, and Angelina and Brad pull it off—making it plausible that a woman too depressed to do anything but drink and cry in bed would have the bandwidth to apply false eyelashes. These two have the ennui something fierce, especially the missus. She's cold and bored, and begins spying on the young honeymooners in the next room, occasionally inducing flashbacks to obscure biological matter. Thus, "What's wrong with her?" becomes Sea's groundbreaking central mystery.
