Angelina Jolie’s latest movie By The Sea, in which she stars with husband Brad Pitt, has been called by critics a “vanity project”.

The relationship drama, written and directed by Angelina Jolie, opened this year’s American Film Institute Film Festival in Los Angeles.

According to Hollywood Reporter, the movie was “far too long” and suffered from “stasis and dramatic flatness”.

Variety added that it “it leaves the heart and mind coolly unstirred”.

The publication summed up the movie as “a gorgeously unhappy 1970s American couple seeking to escape their demons during an extended stay on the Maltese coast”.

Screen Daily said it was “an intimate art-house film for a major studio” and that it was “sure to garner attention because of the marquee attraction” of its stars.

By The Sea is the first movie in which they have starred together since 2005’s Mr. & Mrs. Smith and is Angelina Jolie’s third movie as director, after 2011’s In The Land of Blood and Honey and 2014’s Unbroken.

Screen Daily said Angelina Jolie’s “commitment to serious themes is undercut by a rigid, overblown style”.

“No matter the type of story she’s trying to tell, she often bears down on it so hard that the film doesn’t have much room to breathe,” the publication added.

By The Sea is released in the US theaters on November 13.