Mark Reviews Movies: PLEASURE (2022)

Pleasure, NEON

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 12, 2022

Set within the pornography industry of Los Angeles, Pleasure is, at its core, a morality play. Its message, though, probably isn't what one might expect given the backdrop and the fact that the story does finally possess a lesson for its protagonist to learn.

Writer/director Ninja Thyberg's film doesn't see sex or even pornography as an inherent problem, vice, or sin. Our protagonist, a wannabe adult film star who goes by the stage name Bella Cherry (Sofia Kappel), loves sex, and when the conditions are right, she is almost as happy to have sex in front of a camera.

The central problem being addressed here involves those conditions. Even with legal representation and a lot of paperwork and much talk behind the scenes about matters of consent, the conditions on these porn shoots are rarely right. When one scrapes away the thin layer of legalese and compassion that the people in charge of and working within the industry display, those conditions reveal themselves to be intrinsically wrong.

It's a major distinction—between sex itself and the circumstances surrounding a specific occurrence of sex. That's part of the both the defiant and the almost traditional natures of this film, which features sex but isn't about it (just as the depictions of sex here are graphic but not exactly explicit, save for some routine, business-like, and bored displays of male self-handling).

To be clear, no one who finds sex to be a matter to be taken with complete severity or to be seen as something sacred will find anything of moral value in this film. Similarly, anyone who finds pornography to be distasteful, immoral, or worthy of legal restriction probably won't appreciate it, either. To a certain extent, though, people in that second category might grudgingly see at least some of Thyberg's point. If one is at least generally fine with both sex and pornography, the film offers a thoughtful dissection of the particular ways an industry that revolves around sex possesses little care for the various cultural, legal, and psychological concerns of its main attraction.

Bella has come to L.A. from her native Sweden with a dream of becoming the next big porn star. Almost immediately upon arriving, she's shooting an audition scene, and there's a clever way that Thyberg shows how mundane a porn shoot can be (There are camera angles and matters of blocking to consider, because this is a show, after all), while using those amusing pauses—at first, at least—to make us a bit more comfortable with how quickly and vividly the sex arrives. Later, as Bella's experiences on assorted shoots become more trying and ethically tricky, Thyberg subverts those established expectations of humor and security in the pauses, allowing us to witness the exploitation and manipulation that probably have been in these scenes from the start.

That's one of gradual but clear revelations here, as Bella makes some friends like her roommate/fellow adult actress Joy (Revika Reustle) and porn actor Bear (Chris Cock), faces competition like immediate star Ava (Evelyn Claire), and rises through the ranks of her colleagues. In order to do that, she has to look beyond her current agent Mike (Jason Toler) and toward big-timer Mark Spiegler (playing himself), and in order to catch his attention, Bella has to jump into scenes with sex acts that she wanted to build toward—if she wanted to do them at all.

Thyberg's screenplay, expanded from a 2013 short she made and co-written with Peter Modestij, possesses some behind-the-scenes authenticity, not only in the mechanics of making pornography and the politics of the business, but also in what's happening beneath the surface of those details. While getting a ride home from Bear after her first shoot, Bella learns that the "most extreme" type of scene for a porn actress has nothing to do with a particular physical act. That would be an interracial scene, and Bear notes that Bella's correct that it "sounds racist," because it most assuredly is.

The other insidious areas here have to do with who is on a particular and how the presence of those people—as well as the absence of others—establishes an obvious, if unspoken, power dynamic. In order to get her name out there more, Bella decides to try scenes that involve abuse.

There's a clear-cut dichotomy between one such scene, which is directed by a woman and has multiple people repeatedly checking on Bella's well-being, and another, in which three men are alone with her in a small room. Both scenes are discomforting (the imprints of ropes left behind, for example, in the first), but the latter goes far beyond that, as the men move from unscripted assault to, while offering the empty promise of Bella's consent, what's obviously extortion and rape. When Bella raises concerns about what has happened to her, Mike offers a similar sentiment: Keep quiet, or face being considered "difficult to work with."

The rest of the plot follows a fairly familiar trajectory, as Bella achieves increasing success but loses something of herself in the process. That's where the more traditional side of a morality tale of sorts comes into play here, but there's still a necessary distinction to make. It's neither the love of sex nor the desire for fame that leads to Bella's steady downfall. It's the business and the practices within it themselves that start to ruin sex for her, make that fame hollow, and transform her into the kind of person who would betray a friend's trust, participate in that culture of silence, and become as abusive as others have been toward her. The consequences of Pleasure are psychological and, hence, more harrowing than some moralistic finger-wagging.

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