Starring Angelina Jolie Pitt and Brad Pitt. Rated 14A. Now playing

A person can only take so many shots of Angelina Jolie Pitt, dressed in a wide-brim hat and giant sunglasses, staring sadly off her luxurious hotel balcony, before the question starts to become bothersome: why?

What led one of the most successful actors in Hollywood to craft this deeply odd vanity project? And conscript her equally in-demand hubby for a work so inert and uncomfortable?

Have the years the couple and their brood have spent in their Provence château fed Jolie Pitt’s desire to make a Euro-style art film? Did they want to show off their French? Wasn’t there a Mr. & Mrs. Smith sequel to start shooting?

Whatever the reason, By the Sea is a 1970s-set portrait of a troubled couple who arrive at a secluded seaside hotel. By far the best part of the movie, it’s a historic gem set in an atmospheric Maltese cove. Pitt’s Roland, a once-famous writer, has come to try to pen a new novel but ends up spending day and night in the colourful local bar getting pissed; his spouse whiles away her days lounging in chiffon robes, popping pills by the handful, and generally looking overly made-up and miserable. They don’t speak, let alone get it on. Things perk up a bit when a couple of horny newlyweds move in next door. Jolie Pitt’s Vanessa becomes jealous. And she starts watching them through a handy hole in the wall—a welcome bit of perversion, but one that Jolie Pitt, as writer and director, never takes anywhere interesting.

She seems to want to make one of those French films where nothing happens but the sexual tensions smoulder. But the main problem is her lead actor—herself. It’s not just that she’s taken her fashion cues from what looks like Karen Black wearing Sophia Loren’s oversized glasses after a Bellini bender. She spends the entire movie posing, pouting, and moping—a cipher in clingy silk blouses and liquid eyeliner. Her husband is more believably human and tormented, but even in his pastis-addled state it’s impossible to believe Roland has hooked up with someone this catatonic.

Still, that’s not what’s really offensive. It’s what takes more than two hours to build up to, the kind of women’s-hysteria stuff that went out of date with Peyton Place.
And then the pair of them sulk off into the sunset.