Pleasure

Directed by Ninja Thyberg

Running time: 1hr49 | REVIEWED BY GUY LODGE

Sofia Kappel stars in Pleasure

In Ninja Thyberg’s frank, scalpel-cut Pleasure, a 20-year-old Swedish woman moves all the way to Los Angeles to become a porn star: a story that might once have been presented as some kind of cautionary tale for impressionistic teens and panicked parents alike, dropping a wholesome blonde ingenue into a swamp of iniquity. This, thankfully, is not that film: unblinkingly explicit and accepting of sexuality in a multitude of forms, Pleasure considers the rewards of pornography for spectator and performer alike, reframing its politics for a sex-positive generation.

Which is not to say things don’t get complicated in Thyberg’s discomfiting, hot-and-cold film, which may support its young protagonist Linnea (or Bella Cherry, as she professionally styles herself) in her dreams, but isn’t about to shield her from consequences that aren’t always as positive as she’d like. In a sense, Pleasure is a Gen Z-modern spin on a narrative nearly as old as Hollywood itself: ambitious, bright-eyed ingenue arrives in the City of Angels with stars in her eyes, only to find not all that glitters is gold. 

As a portrait of the LA porn scene, it’s more normalised and progressive than anything we’ve seen before. Shooting with cool, cleanly detached distance, its perspective never overly coloured by emotion, Thyberg treats it very much as the industry it is — and a variable one at that, with safe spaces and no-go corners alike. There’s empowerment, at least initially, in the ways it permits Linnea to put her body to the work for which she feels it’s destined, and to the community of women like her formed as they share living space, party invitations and professional advice. Early on, the female porn director who encourages Linnea to explore BDSM in a controlled, supportive environment is the antithesis of the skeezy patriarchal pornographer stereotype embodied by Burt Reynolds’ Jack Horner in Boogie Nights. It’s a whole new world out there.

Except when it isn’t. For Pleasure’s crisp, unshadowed depiction only shines a harsher light on the exploitation and abuse that Linnea nonetheless encounters in her climb: directors (mostly men) who push her too far or too fast, allies who turn swiftly to enemies, personal boundaries that she herself doesn’t know about until they are broken. Sex-positivity is clear-eyed openness about sex in all its shades, not looking the other way when it hurts and harms: anchored by Sofia Kappel’s remarkable, unguarded performance, Pleasure invites us to consider our own relationship to an industry that can liberate some and violate others.

PLEASURE (2021) Written by Ninja Thyberg, Peter Modestij | Shot by Sophie Winqvist | Edited by Olivia Neergaard-Holm, Amalie Westerlin Tjellesen

Pleasure is now streaming on Mubi.