Bliss (2021 | USA | 103 minutes | Mike Cahill)

I’m still not sure how I feel about Mike Cahill’s Bliss. His fourth full-length feature in ten years, it’s by far his most ambitious venture to date. I teetered between captivation and confusion throughout the film and in so doing wavered between like and annoyance.

Greg (Owen Wilson) is caught in a life of dreariness with a job he has no interest in and a family life that’s less than endearing. Instead of appreciating the good things, he dwells on a waking dream. So much so, he’s on the verge of losing his job and hurts those he loves with painful regularity. After a tension-filled meeting with his boss that could oddly double for a madcap comedic moment, he’s whisked away by a stranger, Isabel (Selma Hayek), who throws his life into complete madness.

From that moment on, you can’t tell which version of Greg’s life is hallucination and which is reality. Similar in concept, yet a far cry from the impact of films like Inception and I’m Thinking of Ending Things, Bliss is meant to bend your sense of reality but can’t decide where it wants to lead us. The second half is full of dramatics without any break in tension, so high-stress is the name of the game and the storyline relies on the viewer’s voyeuristic desire to see if Greg might literally fall apart before Isabelle gets him killed. While it plays on everyone’s intense desire for escapism right now, for me it fell flat. There were times that I could have been pulled in and joyfully swept along in the tidal wave of craziness, but there was just something missing that I couldn’t put my finger on and I never quite made it there.

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Available on Amazon Prime Friday 2/5