Bliss (VCA) Review

Reviewed by Oneloa  on  5/11/2000

Overview
Bliss is a prime example of how close a porn can be to mainstream…with a soap opera twist. Juli Ashton is our main character who is not happy and satisfied with her marriage. She wants it to work, but can’t help straying in her search for sexual satisfaction. Her best friend is Tina Tyler who has some marital problems of her own. While Juli feels remorse for her actions and loves her husband, Tina is icy cold to her husband for his unfaithfulness. Both Juli and Tina play their parts perfectly. Tina seemed to really enjoy this bitchy character… she played it so well. I don’t want to give too much of the movie away, so I won’t go into too much detail with the scenes.

There is a lot of dialog in this movie and it’s done so well. However, the camera angles are what really struck me. Antonio used some subtle, yet brilliant shots (this may be a guy thing!). For instance, there’s a dialog scene in a restaurant, but in the foreground of the shot is another table with a plate of french fries. I know… people are thinking “so what? Big deal!!”, but it’s kind of artsy. If the fries don’t do it for you, these cool camera angles are in the sex scenes too. There’s a great camera angle of Nikita’s reflection off a glass coffee table, or a scene with Gina Ryder with the camera panning across the room showing her reflection off the TV screen, then to the mirror on the night stand to a frontal shot of her riding Tony. As an added bonus, the multiple angles (found in most of the scenes) are true multi-angles… and good ones at that.

Good
There were several great sex scenes. The movie opens up with Juli and Tony. They both fucked each other with such intensity. Very hot! Of course Chloe’s scene was great. She had so many real orgasms… I thought she was going to pass out a few times. Chloe’s scene went from a blowjob right to anal. This scene had a brothel feel with only red light on them and in a seedy motel. Once again, Chloe out does herself by simply having a great time. Of course I have to mention the scene with Juli and Tina. You can tell these two ladies really like each other by the heat they generated in this scene. With both girls wrapped in a 69, the multiple angles came in quite handy. One angle had Tina devouring Juli, the other had Juli eating Tina. I couldn’t choose just one angle… I kept flipping back and forth.

Bad
I have a few of peeves with a couple of scenes. The first one is the scene with Nikita and Joel. Joel kept making this whiny moan during the entire scene. I have a very short fuse for annoying sounds, so this kind of killed any heat that the scene had for me. Too bad, because Nikita looked so gorgeous (as always) in this scene. The background music was classical and low in volume. Unfortunately, all I heard was this awful moaning sound from Joel. Next time I watch the movie, I will mute the volume. My other problem with the movie was with Steve Hatcher. He is quite difficult on the eyes. He was in 3 scenes and did a great job sexually, but whew…. Thank God for the multiple angle feature when they focused on his face.

Features
There’s a behind the scenes featurette that’s about 10 to 15 minutes long. It just shows the stars being themselves and having a good time. There’s a lot of commentary from Tina during this telling us how much fun she had with the crew. I love seeing behind the scenes stuff, it makes you feel like you have a backstage pass. There are 3 trailers: Torn, DMJ6 and Dark Garden. There’s also an audio commentary of the film with Juli, Tina and Antonio. The chapter selection is animated, but only has one selection per sex scene. I like having multiple scene selections, especially in a film this long.

Audio/Video Quality
As I mentioned above, the picture quality is top notch. It doesn’t get any better for porn. The sound is perfect too. You can hear all the dialog as well as every moan and groan (to a fault in some cases). The soundtrack is beautiful and subtle. You won’t hear any “bow chicka bow” in this film. The multiple angles (2) are perfect and in real time. I used it several times in the film to find the perfect spot. Great job!

Overall
Antonio Passolini did a fantastic job with this film. Again, I like the dark soap opera feel it had. The actors pulled off the dialog lines pretty well. Maybe a little bit of over acting with Tony and Steve, but not bad at all. Juli, Tina, Chloe and Joel were superb with the dialog. This is a great couples film too. I wouldn’t recommend it to the raincoaters with as much dialog as there is. This is a must have for DVD collectors and a must see for fans of dialog in porn.