Iron Cove Bridge, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Anthony LaPaglia and Kerry Armstrong in Lantana (2001)

Heath Ledger and Rose Byrne in Two Hands (1999)

Daniel Henshall and Lucas Pittaway in Snowtown (2011)

Laurent Capelluto, Stefano Cassetti, Mehmet Kurtulus, and Pauline Etienne in Into the Night (2020)

Y'know Harry, where exactly are you going to draw the line? If you fire us, you have to fire all the clients.

I'm sorry. Now listen: they release about 18,000 totally new organic compounds every year; none of them are properly tested. God knows how many cause cancer! The whole of the Western world is built on things that cause cancer. They cannot afford to stop making them!

Oh, for Christ's sake, look at your clients. Austrol had benzine in petrol; which is a carcinogen. Mitsuzi use it making tires! And we, we use saccharine, and even if we switch to cyclamates instead, they're just another suspect. And that other lot, your dry cleaning companies, use carbon tetrachloride! And every time

an announcement is made that something might cause cancer, people are less worried because they cannot believe it possible that half of what they breath and eat

Miles Buchanan, Gia Carides, and Lynette Curran in Bliss (1985)

Barry Otto and Rob Steele in Bliss (1985)

Helen Jones and Barry Otto in Bliss (1985)

Barry Otto

Lynette Curran

Helen Jones

Ray Lawrence

Peter Carey

After a near-death experience, a man wonders if he actually did die and is now in Hell.

Bliss

things that cause cancer

There&apos;s an awful lot going on in &quot;Bliss&quot;. I&apos;ve never seen a film that takes so many directions and so many plot turns and twists while still maintaining a general coherence of purpose. It manages this only because it means what it says. Unlike a lot of similarly abstract films, there&apos;s not really an agenda to be weird just because it&apos;s possible. The direction and cinematography surprisingly doesn&apos;t go for the shocking. Instead, the look of the film is natural. Real lighting, normal colours. So all the fantastical stuff stands out all the more.

Barry Otto plays a man with a lot of personal conflict, and a strange sort of charisma. He&apos;s a storyteller above all, and that&apos;s what &quot;Bliss&quot; is also most interested in. Creating real people first, then putting them into the plot. Everyone is developed as much as they need to be, fleshed out to surprising degrees. Barry Otto is very good as the storyteller, but the really surprising bit is the performance of Helen Jones.

There&apos;s certainly flaws to the film as a whole. It goes too far down certain trails, gives too much importance to some events that don&apos;t necessarily lead forward. But the best parts are amongst the best bits of any film of this style, so the missteps can be forgiven. If you like slightly messy, mostly brilliant, mostly forgotten films, &quot;Bliss&quot; is perfect for you.

There's an awful lot going on in "Bliss". I've never seen a film that takes so many directions and so many plot turns and twists while still maintaining a general coherence of purpose. It manages this only because it means what it says. Unlike a lot of similarly abstract films, there's not really an agenda to be weird just because it's possible. The direction and cinematography surprisingly doesn't go for the shocking. Instead, the look of the film is natural. Real lighting, normal colours. So all the fantastical stuff stands out all the more.

Barry Otto plays a man with a lot of personal conflict, and a strange sort of charisma. He's a storyteller above all, and that's what "Bliss" is also most interested in. Creating real people first, then putting them into the plot. Everyone is developed as much as they need to be, fleshed out to surprising degrees. Barry Otto is very good as the storyteller, but the really surprising bit is the performance of Helen Jones.

There's certainly flaws to the film as a whole. It goes too far down certain trails, gives too much importance to some events that don't necessarily lead forward. But the best parts are amongst the best bits of any film of this style, so the missteps can be forgiven. If you like slightly messy, mostly brilliant, mostly forgotten films, "Bliss" is perfect for you.

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