The Trouble With Bliss

Film Synopsis

Dir: Michael Knowles
USA/2011/93mins

Australian Premiere

Morris Bliss’s life is stuck in a dead end. The 35-year-old slacker is broke and stuck living with his silently frustrated father (a deadpan Peter Fonda), but dreams of travelling to places he has only ever read about in books by Orwell and Bowles. Bliss’s problem is simple; he’s just waiting for something – for his life - to happen. And then there’s Stephanie the precocious 18-year-old who seduces him and who happens to be the daughter of an old school friend and Andrea (Lucy Liu) his bored neighbor. What little order Bliss has in his life slowly starts to unwind, because sometimes decisions have to be made.

Flawlessly cast with Michael (Dexter, 6 Feet Under) C. Hall as the titular Bliss, a character far removed from Dexter and Brie (21 Jump Street, Rampart and United States of Tara) Larson as Stephanie, the cast are top-notch, deftly handling a script adapted from Douglas Light’s award winning novel. The Trouble With Bliss uses its New York East Village location well, a space once familiar from indie movies, and a marker to this film’s influences.

Screens with A Tale of Obsession

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