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I have a picture in my head of a place. I dont know if its real. Owen Wilsons Greg in Bliss.

In the metaphysical journey that is Bliss, there comes a time when one almost expects Agent Smith from The Matrix to pop in looking for Mr. Anderson, or perhaps McCabe from Vanilla Sky to find our hero on a rooftop and tell him, Mortality as home entertainment this cannot be the future, can it? because we are deep down the rabbit hole and constantly trying to figure out whats real and whats not real in this trippy and entertaining mind-bender from writer-director Mike Cahill.

Bliss: 3 out of 4

You cant help but think of The Matrix and Vanilla Sky (or its precursor, the 1997 Spanish film Abre los ojos) and even The Fisher King as this Amazon Prime Video feature starts off in the real world and then takes us on a fantastical journey in which were pretty sure well, almost sure, well, maybe not entirely sure about which universe is authentic and which exists only in the imagination.

Owen Wilson reminds us he can do so much more than play the preternaturally laidback aging hippie type with an impressively layered performance as Greg, a middle-aged, divorced father who is an executive of some sort at a large company but spends his days ignoring calls, dodging meetings and creating elaborate drawings depicting an idyllic home that looks positively heavenly. Almost too good to be true. Its not entirely clear how long this has been going on, but if Greg thinks hes fooling his co-workers, hes dead wrong and when hes told the big boss wants to see him, it looks like the end of the road for Greg.

Things go sideways in a big way during that meeting with the boss, and at this early point Bliss has the look and feel of a gritty, grounded thriller about a man unraveling, in the vein of Falling Down. Greg finds himself on the street and connecting with an exotically strange and seemingly unhinged woman named Isabel (Salma Hayek in a terrifically theatrical performance), who bears an uncanny resemblance to one of Gregs sketches. How can this be? Isabel tells Greg its proof theyre living in a manufactured world, and nothing they see none of the people, none of the buildings, nothing at all is really there. Its all part of some grand experiment, and only Greg and Isabel can see through it!

Something like that.

You see all these people outside? Isabel says to Greg. Theyre not real. That sounds crazy, of course, but then Isabel starts teaching Greg some mind-blowing tricks, e.g., how to light a candle from across the room simply by pointing at it and wishing it to be so.

Nesta Cooper delivers strong work as Gregs daughter Emily, who is about to graduate high school and is understandably worried about her father yet even as Emilys very existence seems to offer proof Isabels claims are the rantings of a madwoman, Isabel has Gregs head spinning with her explanations of how Emily isnt real, shes just part of the illusion. Greg was never married and he doesnt have children and he never worked at that company; all of those elements are simply part of the SIMS stuff.

Its all madness until theres a startling revelation indicating Isabel might not be so crazy after all, and the Shangri-La envisioned by Greg in his drawings might actually be the real world. Bliss is a strikingly impressive visual feast, as we toggle back and forth between the stark and oppressively gray world where Greg and Isabel are two oddball characters living under a viaduct and the brightly colored and futuristic nirvana where theyre like the grown-up Homecoming Queen and King of a futuristic, advanced community where virtual reality co-mingles with reality.

Im a little disoriented, Greg says at one point, and its the understatement of his lifetime. To the very end, we can feel Gregs sadness when his world seems to be crumbling, his exhilaration when he believes hes found a new and spectacularly beautiful reality, and his heartbreaking confusion when he has to choose between two worlds a choice that might not really be his to make.

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Bliss: From one reality to the other, trippy mind-bender keeps us guessing - Chicago Sun-Times