![]() ![]() It is however Vergara who steals the show by displaying a range of interpretations of the same character that is all at once haunting, frustrating, and pitiful.Ĭalzado gives Bliss its fragile but enduring core, turning Jane into a casualty of consequence. Trinidad is precious playing a pathetic sideshow. ![]() Gemora and Buencamino are larger than life. There’s a scheme to the madness and Tarog orchestrates the entire thing with barely any bum notes.Īll of the performances are worth noting. The scenes are strung together seamlessly, with the film jumping in and out of Jane’s nightmare with astounding precision. Set in a world where everything is exaggerated, the film makes it almost unnecessary to determine where the nightmare ends and reality begins. It enthralls with its chilling interpretation of a clearly fictional woman being victimized by the byproducts of her once flowery dreams of popularity, but also unsettles with how it is so brazen and unflinching in its aptly indulgent portrayal of discomfortingly familiar realities.īliss is a cleverly designed and expertly executed film. The result is a film of bizarre consequences. In the middle of them all and their mismatched intentions is Jane (Iza Calzado), the hapless actress who after experiencing an accident while filming becomes trapped in a nightmare of recurring misdeeds and abuses. (READ: MTRCB reclassifies Jerrold Tarog’s ‘Bliss’ as R-18) There is the stage mother (Shamaine Buencamino) who can never be satisfied, the director (Audie Gemora) whose incompetence is only matched by his self-celebration, the suspicious nurse (Adrienne Vergara) with malicious motivations, and the worthless husband (TJ Trinidad) who keeps a woman on the side to mask his emasculation. His characters all seem to be caricatures. With an audience infatuated with sweet infatuation, it risks a lot trying to shape entertainment out of despairing visions on all sorts of abuse and abusers.ĭirector Jerrold Tarog carves a puzzle-like narrative from a nation’s infatuation with fame and fantasy. (READ: 6 things to know about Jerrold Tarog’s ‘Bliss’) Its cynical appropriation of the country’s entertainment industry as a breeding ground for monsters and psychopaths is not exactly novel but despite that, its approach is fresh in a way that it makes use of a conventional genre to explore the same themes. It is more terrifying as an artistic interpretation of reality rather than a thriller. It was in a film festival setting that I saw the film first. Jerrold Tarog’s Bliss, I once thought, is a film that I admire more than I like. ![]()
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