BLISS
US, 2021, 103 minutes, Colour.
Owen Wilson, Salma Heyak, Nesta Cooper.
Directed by Mike Cahill.
This is a film made for streaming in the early 2020s. The response has been significantly divided.
On the one hand, some audiences accepted the story as “realistic” and found it confusing and less than interesting. On the other hand, the promotion was in terms of science-fiction. But many consider this misleading.
The film does start realistically, Owen Wilson as Greg, an artist, divorced, phone calls from his daughter to attend her graduation, his wariness about meeting her mother, sketching ideal homes and scenery, called in by his boss, fired. In the confrontation with the boss, he pushes him, the boss hitting his head on the desk, dead, and the panicking Greg standing the boss of the window and drawing a curtain and escaping.
Then eerie happenings, sometimes described as “magical realism”. Greg encounters Isabel, Salma Hayak, who seems to have strange powers, gradually explaining that not everyone was real, that people and situations were created by computers. If audiences accept this explanation, then what follows is logical while always unexpected.
But, Greg is also on some medication and the suggested interpretation of the film is that it highlights the results of medication, mental disturbances, loss of the sense of reality.
Isabel is able to make people appear and disappear, even bring the murdered boss to life. While Greg is reluctant at first, he follows Isabel, finding her living on the street, artwork, elaborate setup, searching for food. It then becomes something of a fantasy romance.
Meanwhile, in the background, Greg’s son and daughter, their response to their missing father, the daughter’s search for him, final encounters, his recognising her not, his going off into his own strange world, lacking the support from Isabel, a world of bewilderment.
Audiences interested in the unusual (though with a standard performance in his own style and accent by Owen Wilson), there is much to tantalise. Two of the director’s earlier films might repay fans of this film, Another Earth and I, Origin.
