Give Up the Search
[Finding Bliss]
Directed by Julie Davis
Running time: 96 min.
The story of prissy film school graduate Jody Balaban (Leelee Sobieski) who takes a job editing adult films in order to secretly film her own script on the studios soundstages at night, [Finding Bliss] is shockingly illogical. This is the kind of film where Leelee Sobieski plays a sexually frightened young woman whose script (titled On the Virge, as if that were any better than the titles of porn films) is about a sexually frightened young woman forcing her boyfriend to wait for sex. To further distance itself from the real world, the actress cast as the character is played by that world-famous paragon of virtue (and youthfulness) Denise Richards?
Yes, Richards is there, wearing a gold cross and feigning innocence. By the time her true role is revealed, audiences will have long realized the twist, and no one will care.
In addition to Richards and Sobieski (who is coiffed in an unflattering hairstyle that looks as if someone scalped Shirley Temple), Kristen Johnston pops up for a few (too few) scenes as the head of Grind Studios, blithely lending some genuine comedy to the proceedings on the way to cash her check. Matthew Davis, as a renowned porn director, lends some softcore sleaze, while Jamie Kennedy appears as adult film star Richard Harder and bares all in the name of very little.
Writer-director Julie Davis has no idea what she wants to say (the upshot of the film seems to be that women should embrace their sexuality for the happiness of men, up to and including dressing in latex) and spends a ridiculous amount of time not saying it. Cheap and hideous to look at, the movie feels increasingly like a lower budget Skinemax offering, but more poorly plotted. Sobieski can barely hold her head above water throughout, struggling to overcome the limitations of the script and her own narrow talent, before giving in completely and letting the movie wash over her. Audiences will experience the same reaction. Why fight something so willfully stupid?