Bliss Reviews

1985's BLISS received the australian academy award for best picture--but the film has the capacity to provoke rapture or rage--or incredulity--for BLISS is a savage condemnation of western life, and it condemns in terms both wildly comic, and deeply repulsive. as the film opens, advertising executive harry joy (barry otto) suffers a heart attack at a dinner party and DIES. as paramedics struggle to revive him harry has a vision of THE AFTERLIFE. instead of receiving a consoling glimpse of heaven, harry arrives at the hospital convinced of the reality of hell. he expects, in fact, that he may be in hell. in the new 'reality' of his visions, his own IIMMORALITY and that of his family and friends is revealed in horrific visions. roaches crawl from a wound in harry's chest, his son dresses up as a nazi, his wife is unfaithful with harry's accountant--having sex on a table in his favorite restaurant. desperate for salvation, harry returns to his agency, and resigns from an account with clients who make cancer causing products. he starts a relationship with honey barbara, passionate nature lover, as well as neophyte hooker. harry becomes determined to live a 'clean' life, but in the advertising business where forces of evil and wholesale deception run rampant, harry must endure many more bizarre trials, before finding his own paradise.----part farce, part morality tale, BLISS is an unusually challenging film and one that defies easy classifications, or patent judgements. director ray lawrence has given us an agonizing and forceful vision of life in hell, and the personal compomises that send us there.