Review of the film "Pleasure" - a dark drama about the underside of the porn industry
Nina Tyuberg's debut film is not shy about explicit scenes and conversations on "adult" topics.
Twenty-year-old girl Linnea (Sofia Kappel) moves from a provincial Swedish town to distant Los Angeles to make a name for herself in the porn industry. She takes the pseudonym Bella Cherry, moves into the house of the same starlets and begins to conquer auditions. Over time, she gets tired of the semi-amateur level at which she works, so after a chance meeting with a new porn star, Bella sets herself an ambitious goal: to work with the general manager in the city and become the best, even if for this she has to, to put it mildly, be at the limit of her physical opportunities.
In one of the first scenes at the border control at the airport, the heroine is asked the standard question about the purpose of the visit: "business trip or pleasure." She unemotionally chooses the latter. Then it becomes clear that the title of the film is ironic: there is no pleasure for a woman inside the patriarchal porn industry; there it is most often not about hedonism, but about the tedious and forced earning a living. Bella and the viewer can also forget about pleasure. For many, the Teuberg movie will be an exhausting and shocking experience: still, watching cum, vaginal douching, BDSM, brutal sex scenes with humiliation and penis injections is not the most pleasant experience. On the other hand, all this is important for the overall idea, because no one has shown the porn industry so honestly, without glamor, romanticization and objectification.
In 2013, Tuberg presented a short film of the same name about an aspiring actress getting ready for a hardcore sex scene. After that, the director moved to Los Angeles and for several years collected information about the inner workings of the porn industry, communicated with the stars of adult films and subsequently transferred their experiences to the big screen (for example, causing a difference between filming men and women). Many of them, by the way, ended up in the film - and some played themselves, so porn fans will recognize a couple of familiar faces. In a word, as it is customary to say in the scientific community, a colossal work was carried out, such a large-scale anthropological study of what it is like to be inside this multi-billion dollar industry. It is therefore bittersweet to admit that this painstakingly crafted, unvarnished representation is one of the few reasons the film can be praised for. Another, and no less important, is the bold role of the debutante Sofia Kappel.
Hidden behind the frank and shocking scenes of the film is a surprisingly faded, secondarily constructed and cowardly truncated story. On the thorny path to success, Bella betrays her friend, and most importantly, herself, because she herself becomes an alienated professional who sees only work in an intimate process and perceives her colleague as a piece of meat. "Pleasure" remains in the memory as a familiar and often seen movie about the price that one has to pay for fame and the opportunity to become the best.
This article was sponsored by Ken Haraguchi
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