BLISS

CONTAINS SOME SPOILERS AND CALM DOWN, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!!!

DRUGS!!! SEX!!! BLOOD!!! NUDITY!!! STROBING!!! BOOZE!!! MORE DRUGS!!! HEADACHES!!! SWEARING!!! SHOUTING!!! DEATH!!! HORRIBLE PEOPLE!!! PAINT!!! BELLOWING!!! LOUD MUSIC!!! JOE BEGOS' LATEST IS SADLY A HUGE DISAPPOINTMENT AFTER THE EIGHTIES THROWBACKS OF ALMOST HUMAN AND THE MIND'S EYE!!! PARTICULARLY THE SECOND ONE!!! THIS HAS NONE OF THE RETRO CHARM OF EITHER OF THEM, BEING CONTENT MERELY TO SCREAM AT YOU THROUGH A MEGAPHONE TO ABSOLUTELY NO POSITIVE EFFECT!!!

That's what Bliss is like: a film made in All Caps. It reaches peak volume and intensity very quickly (the opening credits are look-away dazzling), so it has nowhere else to go for the rest of the running time, and it scarcely lets up. Telling of spectacularly foul-mouthed artist Dezzy facing an imminent deadline who breaks her creative block by ingesting huge amounts of drugs, but becomes something else as a result, it doesn't have all that much in the way of story, characters worth spending any time with (at no time did I give a toss about anybody on screen) or nuance BECAUSE EVERYONE IS SCREAMING AND DRINKING AND INGESTING AND LISTENING TO RUBBISH MUSIC AND TAKING THEIR CLOTHES OFF ALL THE TIME AT FULL VOLUME.

MAYBE IT WOULD.... sorry: maybe it would be less of an ordeal if seen at home: it's shot on grainy 16mm celluloid but it looks terrible when projected on an unsuitably large Imax screen, giving the low-def resolution the effect of a slightly off-station TV set. It would definitely have helped it there had been some peaks and troughs rather than a near-constant maximum: it has no room to breathe, so neither do we. And it would have helped if lead character Dezzy hadn't been so thoroughly uninteresting. I found it a slog to get through, completely unlikeable and occasionally unwatchable, and a major letdown after The Mind's Eye. Pass the Nurofen.

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