Pleasure is the feature-length directorial debut from Ninja Thyberg and is effectively an expanded version of her acclaimed 2013 short film of the same name. Having been selected for the 2020 Cannes Film Festival that never took place due to COVID-19, it eventually premiered at last year’s Sundance. The film centers on Linnéa (Sofia Kappel), a 19-year-old Swedish woman who moves to Los Angeles with dreams of making it big in the hardcore pornography business. Under the working name of Bella Cherry, she overcomes her nerves and shoots her first sexually explicit film with a crew who are surprisingly tender and sensitive, and she becomes friends with assistant director (and sometime porn star himself) Bear (Chris Cock) in the process. She moves into a house with several other young women with the same aspirations as her, and she initially does not get on well with them. She becomes friends with one of them, Joy (Zelda Morrison), then, after a while, the rest of them. Together, her and her housemates navigate the travails of an industry rife with exploitation.
Pleasure functions as a highly effective cautionary tale. It is honest about the attractions of an industry that offers people the chance to get paid for having sex, but equally honest about how easily and readily that industry can and does take advantage of young women’s ambitions to earn money that way. In the scenes depicting pornographic shoots, cinematographer Sophie Winqvist avoids falling into the “male gaze” trap by focusing her camera just as much (if not more so) on the male performers’ bodies as on those of their female co-stars. Thyberg coaxes performances out of her actors that convey the friendships and rivalries that one can imagine developing behind the scenes of pornographic films very effectively.
The film conveys just how strange the feelings of shooting BDSM films as a newcomer must be. In an example of the film’s even-handedness, Linnéa has a remarkably positive experience shooting such material, in contrast with the decidedly negative experience she has of shooting scenes of violent, non-consensual intercourse with a cast and crew of aggressive men. This is a business with a massive, gaping power imbalance at its core, one that Thyberg does not shy away from depicting.
Whilst the portrayal of the pornography industry in the film overall is a broadly negative one, Thyberg steers well clear of moralizing about individuals’ decisions to forge careers for themselves in the making of pornographic material. This is not a film that says, “Do not enter this world.” This is a film that says, “If you’re going to enter this world, then here’s what you should know.” It is not expressing a desire for this industry to simply disappear (because clearly, that’s not going to happen), but a desire for this industry to be conducted on fairer principles. Pleasure is an engaging, thought-provoking and entertaining experience, one that might just cause viewers to rethink their late-night viewing habits.
Photo courtesy of NEON
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