Bliss
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Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
A newlywed couple in sex therapy; the wife's secret therapist teaches Tantra, and the husband follows her there.
Joseph and Maria have been married for six months when they take their unhappy sex life to a marriage counsellor, Alfred. In his office Maria admits that she has never had an orgasm with Joseph and has been faking them, and he is shaken. Joseph is an architect. One day on a building site the workers show him what they have been watching through a surveyor's telescope: a silver-haired man in the building opposite, making love to one woman after another. One of the women is Maria. The man is Baltazar, a sex therapist working at the edge of the law, who sleeps with his patients as part of the cure.
Joseph storms into Baltazar's office and stays to listen. Baltazar tells him that Maria is fragile and that something in her childhood is at work, and Joseph insists on taking her place as his patient. The lessons draw on tantric teaching: breathing, restraint, the difference between orgasm and ejaculation, exercises done hanging upside down, and the idea that the aim of sex is not orgasm but bliss.
When Joseph at last brings Maria to orgasm, she has a seizure and is taken to hospital. There Alfred and Baltazar meet, and what comes to light is a memory Maria had buried: as a child she was sexually abused by her father. She recovers, but cannot bear to be close to Joseph and asks him to move out. He takes a cheap flat.
Baltazar calls him to a group therapy session Maria has joined, and Joseph listens as she tells the circle about the abuse and the shame she has carried since. She loves him, she says, but she is frightened, and she needs time alone to heal. Baltazar tells Joseph that she has been brave to say it in front of him, and that he must go on loving her rather than run. Encouraged, Joseph says quietly that Maria can be reborn, and the film leaves him holding on to that hope.
Starring
Sheryl Leeas Maria
A newlywed who has hidden her unhappiness in bed from her husband, and who secretly goes to a radical sex therapist.
Maria’s story
Six months into her marriage, Maria admits in the counsellor's office that she has never had an orgasm with Joseph and has been faking them. She swings between moods, wages war on the ants in her house, and in secret sees Baltazar, a sex therapist who sleeps with his patients, until Joseph takes her place. When Joseph at last brings her to orgasm, she has a seizure and a buried memory comes back: her father sexually abused her when she was a child. Home again, she cannot bear Joseph near her and asks him to move out. In a therapy group, with Joseph listening, she tells the circle about the abuse and the shame she has carried, says she loves him but is afraid, and asks for time alone to heal.
Craig Shefferas Joseph
Maria's husband, an architect, who goes to confront the therapist sleeping with his wife and ends up as his pupil.
Joseph’s story
Six months into his marriage, Joseph is shaken to learn in counselling that Maria has been faking her pleasure. On a building site, workmen show him through a surveyor's telescope a silver-haired man making love to one woman after another in the flat opposite; one of them is Maria. He storms into Baltazar's office, knocks things off the desk, stays to listen, and soon takes her place as the patient. He learns to breathe, to hold back, to hang upside down and to tell strangers he loves himself. When his new skill brings Maria to orgasm, she has a seizure and remembers her father's abuse, and asks him to move out. Called by Baltazar to her therapy group, he hears her story, is told to keep loving her rather than run, and says quietly that she can be reborn.
Terence Stampas Baltazar
A silver-haired sex therapist working at the edge of the law, who sleeps with his patients and teaches tantric technique.
Spalding Grayas Alfred
The couple's conventional marriage counsellor, whose psychoanalytic sessions bring Maria's secret into the open.
Why it matters
Bliss takes a subject most films play for laughs, a young marriage in which sex is not working, and treats it seriously. Its answer, borrowed from tantric teaching, is that fulfilment depends on intimacy and trust rather than technique. Then it complicates that answer: the pleasure Joseph learns to give brings Maria back to abuse she had buried, and what her body remembers has to be faced before anything can heal. Its therapist sleeps with his patients, and critics objected to that. The ratings board had its own difficulty. Lance Young said he submitted eleven versions of his first film and was given an NC-17 each time; it came out with an R only after Sony hired an editor to trim two love scenes. What the film leaves open is whether closeness can be learned like a skill, and what happens when closeness reaches the past.