Pleasure is the story of 19-year-old Swede Bella Cherry (Sofia Kappel) and her attempts to establish herself in the LA porn scene. She claims that she wants to become the world's next big porn star; however, achieving this goal will prove to be anything other than simple. Along her journey, she meets a variety of performers, agents and directors, all of whom are at different levels in the porn pyramid. If she wants to get to the top, she will have to become a fearless, dedicated performer, and go beyond emotional and physical boundaries that she could only previously have imagined attempting to cross. She quickly learns that the porn world is an intense, sometimes brutal, sometimes insane place to be, and it is not certain that Bella Cherry has what is takes to survive.
The debut feature effort of both director Ninja Thyberg and actress Sofia Kappel, Pleasure is a film which is extremely comfortable with making its audience squirm. This starts from one of the film's first scenes, which has an extreme close-up of Bella's most intimate region while she shaves herself in preparation for her first shoot. There is a slight scratch just above the perineal area which has previously been bleeding. Such details immediately remove the arousal that a young, naked woman in another context might elicit. They show her physical vulnerability, thus, her humanity. From there, we must bear witness to Bella being directed in a sex scene with a man who is more than twice her age. She is instructed as to how to move, where to look and what to say as she gets to work on fellating and copulating her way through her first scene. Shots of erect penises and ejaculation are filmed in a way that is more akin to something from a horror film than a sex scene. Thyberg has a way of visually emphasising the coldness and detachment that engaging in such work involves. The way the male's erection engorges the camera in extreme close-up is reminiscent of one of Ridley Scott's aliens emerging into shot on U. S. S Sulaco. Bella then films herself at the end of the scene on her smartphone with her face covered in ejaculate, a substance that doesn't look too dissimilar to that which infamously burst from John Hurt's character from the same film. The scene is a brilliant evocation of naked objectification. Sex for money is literally shown as invasive, intrusive, borderline horrific and fundamentally unarousing.
This is one of the great strengths of Thyberg's film; it completely subverts the purpose of pornography. There is very little that is titilating about Pleasure, a film title that is very much a misnomer. There are also insights into the off-camera realities of porn as the audience is exposed to the insidious psychological manipulation which takes place. Whenever Bella gets uncomfortable and does not wish to continue with a scene, the directors often know the right words to use and the right approaches to take in order to get her to do their bidding. They'll be encouraging, sensitive and supportive when necessary and they'll be threatening, hostile and borderline forceful when it suits. However, it would be wrong to see these people as the enemy. What lies behind all of the film's events, no matter how uncomfortable and dark they become, is the fact that Bella is there to experience them of her own volition. In fact, she has travelled halfway across the world to have these experiences. And so that takes us to a pretty salient question: why?
This is where the film struggles. The motivations for Bella's desire to be part of a world which she clearly finds alienating and intimidating are never made clear. This is despite Kappel giving a flawless performance in the central role. She exudes both fearlessness and extreme vulnerability; cold detachment and youthful naivety; single-minded ambition and profound ambivalence. There is so much range to Kappel's performance but the character is not written in such a way as to find any central motivation. Porn is a world of extremes and only extreme personalities belong there. Bella doesn't seem to be all that interested in sex, in fact the film never depicts her having sex off camera. There is no evidence of any events from her past influencing her decision either. Quite the opposite, the cliché of all pornstars being abused as children is very quickly mocked and dismissed in the early scenes of the film. So why is she there? Is she just a product of an extreme generation that is so obsessed with Warhol's predicted fifteen-minutes of fame that she'll take whatever route best available to get her there? This is never made clear. And the fact that the film is so tightly focused on her character (she is in literally every scene) means that it is hard to find any reason to extrapolate from her character to her generation as a whole. It is worth noting that the only scene we get which reveals anything of Bella's life back in Sweden only confuses matters even more. The background motivations for her actions just don't seem to be present.
What we have, then, is a twisted, subversive film experience in which a young, pretty naive woman is thrust into an environment of humiliation, degradation and brutality. We are shown sex scenes which are not arousing. We are shown glamour which is utterly unappealing. We are shown a character who is trying to establish herself in a world that is constantly in flux. The art direction is astounding and the soundtrack is atmospheric and unsettling, while the overall tone of the film is unflinchingly menacing. Yet, despite some interesting reveals as to attitudes and approaches which exist behind the camera, and despite the heavy on-camera involvement of actors and directors directly from the porn industry, what we do not get is a genuine insight into the mindset of a porn star. Bella is quite simply an abstraction of a real-life porn performer, she's not the real deal. As interesting and as darkly engaging as this film is, less atmosphere and more psychological revelation could have led to a genuinely vital document. Most of us will have been exposed to, or exposed ourselves to, porn at some point in our lives. It is now virtually ubiquitous. But how many of us truly understand what the porn industry is, or what motivates its most recognised performers? I'm not sure I do, and I don't really feel much the wiser for having watched this film.
The debut feature effort of both director Ninja Thyberg and actress Sofia Kappel, Pleasure is a film which is extremely comfortable with making its audience squirm. This starts from one of the film's first scenes, which has an extreme close-up of Bella's most intimate region while she shaves herself in preparation for her first shoot. There is a slight scratch just above the perineal area which has previously been bleeding. Such details immediately remove the arousal that a young, naked woman in another context might elicit. They show her physical vulnerability, thus, her humanity. From there, we must bear witness to Bella being directed in a sex scene with a man who is more than twice her age. She is instructed as to how to move, where to look and what to say as she gets to work on fellating and copulating her way through her first scene. Shots of erect penises and ejaculation are filmed in a way that is more akin to something from a horror film than a sex scene. Thyberg has a way of visually emphasising the coldness and detachment that engaging in such work involves. The way the male's erection engorges the camera in extreme close-up is reminiscent of one of Ridley Scott's aliens emerging into shot on U. S. S Sulaco. Bella then films herself at the end of the scene on her smartphone with her face covered in ejaculate, a substance that doesn't look too dissimilar to that which infamously burst from John Hurt's character from the same film. The scene is a brilliant evocation of naked objectification. Sex for money is literally shown as invasive, intrusive, borderline horrific and fundamentally unarousing.
This is one of the great strengths of Thyberg's film; it completely subverts the purpose of pornography. There is very little that is titilating about Pleasure, a film title that is very much a misnomer. There are also insights into the off-camera realities of porn as the audience is exposed to the insidious psychological manipulation which takes place. Whenever Bella gets uncomfortable and does not wish to continue with a scene, the directors often know the right words to use and the right approaches to take in order to get her to do their bidding. They'll be encouraging, sensitive and supportive when necessary and they'll be threatening, hostile and borderline forceful when it suits. However, it would be wrong to see these people as the enemy. What lies behind all of the film's events, no matter how uncomfortable and dark they become, is the fact that Bella is there to experience them of her own volition. In fact, she has travelled halfway across the world to have these experiences. And so that takes us to a pretty salient question: why?
This is where the film struggles. The motivations for Bella's desire to be part of a world which she clearly finds alienating and intimidating are never made clear. This is despite Kappel giving a flawless performance in the central role. She exudes both fearlessness and extreme vulnerability; cold detachment and youthful naivety; single-minded ambition and profound ambivalence. There is so much range to Kappel's performance but the character is not written in such a way as to find any central motivation. Porn is a world of extremes and only extreme personalities belong there. Bella doesn't seem to be all that interested in sex, in fact the film never depicts her having sex off camera. There is no evidence of any events from her past influencing her decision either. Quite the opposite, the cliché of all pornstars being abused as children is very quickly mocked and dismissed in the early scenes of the film. So why is she there? Is she just a product of an extreme generation that is so obsessed with Warhol's predicted fifteen-minutes of fame that she'll take whatever route best available to get her there? This is never made clear. And the fact that the film is so tightly focused on her character (she is in literally every scene) means that it is hard to find any reason to extrapolate from her character to her generation as a whole. It is worth noting that the only scene we get which reveals anything of Bella's life back in Sweden only confuses matters even more. The background motivations for her actions just don't seem to be present.
What we have, then, is a twisted, subversive film experience in which a young, pretty naive woman is thrust into an environment of humiliation, degradation and brutality. We are shown sex scenes which are not arousing. We are shown glamour which is utterly unappealing. We are shown a character who is trying to establish herself in a world that is constantly in flux. The art direction is astounding and the soundtrack is atmospheric and unsettling, while the overall tone of the film is unflinchingly menacing. Yet, despite some interesting reveals as to attitudes and approaches which exist behind the camera, and despite the heavy on-camera involvement of actors and directors directly from the porn industry, what we do not get is a genuine insight into the mindset of a porn star. Bella is quite simply an abstraction of a real-life porn performer, she's not the real deal. As interesting and as darkly engaging as this film is, less atmosphere and more psychological revelation could have led to a genuinely vital document. Most of us will have been exposed to, or exposed ourselves to, porn at some point in our lives. It is now virtually ubiquitous. But how many of us truly understand what the porn industry is, or what motivates its most recognised performers? I'm not sure I do, and I don't really feel much the wiser for having watched this film.