After impressing with her first feature in the director’s chair – In the Land of Blood and Honey – Angelina Jolie disappointed with her studio-sized sophomore drama, Unbroken, which reeked of a desperate bid to be taken seriously by awards voters with its schmaltz tone and massive scale. For her third feature, By the Sea, Jolie has gone in the opposite direction to serve up an intimate character study. It seems like the transition has brought out the best in Jolie.
In By the Sea, Jolie reunites on-screen with her husband Brad Pitt for the first time since Mr and Mrs Smith. They play a married couple in the mid-1970s traveling through France who are forced to re-examine their relationship after an encounter with a younger couple (Mélanie Laurent and Melvil Poupaud) in a seaside town.
Pitt and Jolie reportedly shot the film when on their honeymoon last year, and while the setting looks like an ideal spot for a romantic getaway, By the Sea doesn’t look like it was fun to shoot. The first trailer, released today by Universal Pictures, features running mascara, pill popping, awkward silences and some brutal slapping.
This marks the first time that Jolie has directed herself on-screen, and the first glimpses of her performance recall her impassioned work in Girl, Interrupted, which won her the Oscar for best supporting actress in 2000. Pitt also appears to be on form, albeit in a more subdued role.
She described By the Sea as an “an art film” to Vanity Fair, saying it’s “the kind of movie that I like to see but not something I’m usually cast in.” She also called it her “hardest film ... because it wasn’t [issue-driven].” She confessed: “It’s something I probably won’t do very much of.”
By The Sea will be released on 13 November in the US.
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