‘Bliss’ brings us a ‘Matrix’-adjacent universe
Writer-director Mike Cahilll’s “Bliss” is about Greg, played by Owen Wilson, who can’t seem to focus on his job at a firm called Technical Difficulties. Psychologically he too is having technical difficulties; he loses himself in a kind of reverie, sketching detailed drawings of his imagined dream home by the sea, and of a sultry woman, smoking, framed in a doorway.
In the first few minutes Greg is fired. Then, a comically abrupt inciting event: Getting up from his seat, dazed and newly unemployed, he startles his supervisor who stumbles back, hits his head on his desk, and dies. “Bliss” has only begun, and it’s a promisingly strange beginning. Hiding the body, Greg ducks into the tavern across the street, where he meets Isabel, who is telekinetic and speaks of a computer-simulated universe. Salma Hayek plays her, which means Greg goes along with every single thing she and the movie propose.
Too soon, though, Cahill’s story ambitions start little intramural fights with one another, and the pacing and tone become fuzzy. The movie’s fantasy/reality gamesmanship is on the plodding side; that’s the wrong side if your goal is to disorient your audience, while keeping that audience off-balance but hooked.
Elements of Greg’s story are nailed down early. He’s recently divorced. He speaks to his daughter (Nesta Cooper), whose graduation is coming up, of realizing he has “messed up.” “I have so many thoughts I wish you could see,” Greg tells her, yearningly. This line comes early, and tips Cahill’s hand. Are we in a “Matrix”-adjacent universe? Is this a metaphoric fantasy about mental illness, addiction and the dark allure of an imagined world more comforting and welcoming than our own?
Isabel lives in a homeless encampment near the L.A. River, but she and Greg snort magic crystals (yellow and blue, derived from asteroids, we’re told) to journey to and from the world Isabel claims is a mass hallucination. She becomes Greg’s lover, soothseer and travel agent. While Greg’s apparent real-life daughter searches for her father on the L.A. streets, Isabel and Greg enter the elaborate manifestation of the sketches shown early on. Cahill filmed “Bliss” partly on Lopud, an island off southern Croatia, which looks pretty ripe indeed.
By the end, Cahill’s quite clear about where he was going all along, and which painful, alltoo-human challenges have been guiding the story. Wilson and Hayek let their wildly contrasting natural authority and charisma take care of business; now that both actors are in their 50s, that authority feels natural and well-earned.
I wish the results were better, and a lot stranger. Cahill’s world-building has its moments, though. And the filmmaker did determine — correctly — that it’d be fun to have Bill Nye, the science guy, in a bow tie, portraying a sniffy scientific researcher. ‘BLISS’;2 stars; Advisory: for drug content, language, some sexual material and violence; Running time: 1:45; Premieres: Friday on Amazon Prime.