Bliss is a 1985 Australian film directed by Ray Lawrence, co-adapted by Lawrence and Peter Carey, author of the original novel from which it is adapted.
It starred Barry Otto, who was a that time best known in Sydney for his theatre work, and Lynette Curran, a veteran star of Australian stage, TV and film and a former co-star of the popular ABC soap opera Bellbird. Notable among the supporting roles is an early film appearance by Gia Carides (wife of actor Anthony La Paglia) and an early cameo role by John Doyle (better known as Rampaging Roy Slaven of This Sporting Life fame.
After a rocky start—400 of the 2000-strong audience walked out during its first screening at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival -- the film went on to receive multiple awards at the AFI awards.[1]
Plot summary
Harry Joy, an advertising executive in an unnamed Australian city who is known for his ability to tell stories, has a terrifying near-death experience after suffering a massive heart attack, brought on by his dissolute lifestyle. Upon recovering, he believes himself to be either in a hellish version of the world he knew, or with his eyes opened to an altogether different view of that world. He eventually discovers that his wife is unfaithful, his dissolute daughter trades sex for hard drugs with his deviant son, and his latest client is a carcinogenic polluter.
Harry tries to reform and steer a morally correct path, abandoning most of the trappings of his previous affluent life, to the dismay and disruption of everyone around him. He is also seemingly 'tested' by a series of bizarre and frightening events including being 'sectioned' to a psychiatric hospital. In one memorable sequence, Harry is dragged through a bizarre and blackly humorous chain of events, in which he smokes marijuana for the first time with a dying waiter, then has his car crushed by an elephant and is finally arrested. The extended version of this sequence was cut from the original theatrical release after its premiere at Cannes, but the full length scene featuring a tour-de-force monologue by Barry Otto (captured in a single unedited take) was restored for the film's re-issue in the 1990s.
Fighting for his sanity, he flees his home and takes up residence in a hotel, where meets a young hippie country girl, Honey Barbara, who prostitutes herself and helps a friend sell marijuana on trips to the city to bring money back to their forest commune. Harry decides that Barbara is his true love but he is soon drawn back into his old ways, and she with him. She eventually rejects Harry's lapse back to materialism and flees to the commune, refusing to see him. Harry pursues her patiently over many years, living alone near her commune, and eventually winning her heart with a 'gift' of plantings of the type of tree that provides Barbara's favourite honey.
Selected cast
VHS cover, depicting the movie as a cartoonish comedy
Commercial and critical reception
Early responses to Bliss were mixed, as the Cannes walkouts attest. Its initial Australian release was killed after it was given an R certificate rating by the government film censorship office, because of the incest scene between Harry’s children, and as a result, no Australian distributor would handle it. The classification was eventually overturned on appeal and the film opened at the State Theatrette in Sydney, a tiny former newsreel theatrette with 130 seats. Positive reviews and word of mouth helped it to find an audience and become a cult hit. It won three AFI Awards for Best Picture, Best Direction and Best Adapted Screenplay for 1985 and played for six months[2].
Bliss has since acquired a significantly higher critical reputation. Former Sydney Morning Herald film critic and Sydney Film Festival director Paul Byrnes describes it as -
- "... a key film in the story of Australian movies. It represents a kind of liberation point – a leap away from naturalism and the historical realism of the 'new wave’ of the 1970s, towards the modernism of the 1990s. To say it was ahead of its time is an understatement – the boldness of its metaphors and the sharpness of its satire were too much for many people in 1985."[3]
Despite the film's eventual success, director Ray Lawrence did not direct a second film until Lantana (2001), and in the intervening period he chiefly earned his living as a director of television commercials, several of which won industry awards. His third film, Jindabyne, was released in 2006.
Awards
The film won the Best Film, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay Awards and was nominated for 10 more Awards of the Australian Film Institute in 1985. It was also nominated for the Palme d'Or (Goilden Palm) at the Cannes Film Festival[4] in the same year.
References
External links
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