I’ve heard second-hand poop from a guy who’s seen Angelina Jolie‘s By The Sea (Universal, 11.13), which will open AFI Fest on 11.5. It’s been described as “an old-fashioned European art film” and, the source added, a good one in that vein. But now Jolie is describing it as a grief movie about her mother. I’m telling you right now that bummed out feelings are not, in and of themselves, anyone’s idea of compelling subject matter for a film.
I’m saying this having just struggled through Reed Morano‘s Meadowland, another grief movie. Nobody can tell me much about downish mood pits, trust me, and I sure as hell don’t want to sit through a film that tries to soak me in someone else’s quicksand. Thanks but nope.
In a new Vogue interview, it’s said that Jolie “wanted to explore bereavement — how different people respond to it. She set the action in the ’70s, when her mother was in her vibrant 20s, and began simply with a husband and wife. She gave them a history of grief, put them in a car, and drove them to a seaside hotel to see how the pair — Roland, a novelist with a red typewriter, and Vanessa, a former dancer with boxes of clothes and hats — attend to their pain. Vanessa is frail, tortured, hemmed in. She feeds her mourning a diet of pills and suicidal fantasies. Roland is defeated by the seclusion of her anguish, and drinks. And so it goes on until innocent newlyweds move in next door…”
