Movie Review: Bliss

Bliss * ½ / *****

Directed by: Joe Begos.

Written by: Joe Begos.

Starring: Dora Madison (Dezzy), Tru Collins (Courtney), Rhys Wakefield (Ronnie), Jeremy Gardner (Clive), Graham Skipper (Hadrian), Chris McKenna (David), Rachel Avery (Nikki St. Jean), Mark Beltzman (Lance), George Wendt (Pops), Abraham Benrubi (Abe), Jesse Merlin (Dante). 

 

It's never fun to be the sober person trapped with a bunch of drunk or high people. You can tell what they are doing is crazy or stupid, you can tell what they sound like, but you’re never going to break through to them. Bliss is a film that basically emulates that experience for 80 minutes. I think it wants to be an overwhelming, anxiety inducing, relentless thriller like Uncut Gems – but it ends up being a tired provocation full of stale ideas put together with the subtly of a sledgehammer to the face. I admired the lead performance by Dora Madison – she gives it her all and then some – but there is little I find more boring than a film trying so hard to be edgy.

 

In the film, Madison stars as Dezzy – a celebrated artist in L.A. who has done some album covers, and gotten written about, but still cannot quite make ends meet. She has an upcoming show – and the money has run out, and she cannot seem to finish what is supposed to be the centerpiece of her show. She ends up going to her drug dealer and scoring something called Bliss – which she takes, and sends her on a crazy, sex fueled trip with her friend Courtney (Tru Collins) and her sometime boyfriend. As one night turns to another, she keeps getting high, and she starts thirsting for more – but this time not just sex and drugs, but blood. Every night, she heads out into the lurid world on L.A. – here shot in bright reds, and saturated greens, for her sex, drug and violence fueled evenings that get increasingly lurid. She then returns home to do more work on her supposed masterpiece.

 

When this type of movie works, it can be an overwhelming experience. I do think of Uncut Gems – but also Gaspar Noe’s Climax or last year’s Mandy – films that can overwhelm your senses, and even the parts of your brain that require logic. But Bliss never reaches those heights. Perhaps it’s because its message seems to be some combination of Abel Ferrara’s The Addiction – his vampire as drug addicts film – with some flimsy messaging about artists being vampires themselves in their work. And it’s certainly because writer/director Joe Begos thinks that all the sex and gore he puts on screen makes the film edgy and daring – even if there is nothing behind those images. He wants to be provocative, but doesn’t have any provocative ideas.

 

So what we’re stuck with is an 80-minute trip through hell which is basically just dull and boring. Yes, Madison gives it her all – I’d love to see her in another movie where she had a character to play. But other than that, there really is nothing in Bliss worth talking about.