Like all Hollywood hopefuls, the “Pleasure” heroine dreams big: she wants to be a star. It’s going to be tough, though she looks the part with blonde hair and blue eyes that waver between calculation and just enough vacancy to please male power. She already has this – it’s the love of the camera – but a lot of pretty people do it too, and they too are burning with desire. They will do anything to make it happen, but maybe not exactly everything she does.
Reader, she wants to be a porn star.
This story and its desire are not for everyone, no doubt. But if you’re curious about what a feminist view of this world looks like, “Pleasure” might surprise you as much as it does me. It’s a smart, daring, and utterly unexpected film that, at its center, is an old-school story about an ambitious wannabe who overcomes the odds to become another American success story. It’s also one of the most explicit films to have premiered at the Sundance Film Festival (in 2021) and, after being snagged by Neon (the company that released “Parasite”), will play in movie houses. art across the country, from Boston to Oklahoma City.
What makes “Pleasure” the most provocative, however – worthy of serious consideration and discussion, not the usual indignation or blasé shrugs – is that it is a complex and even-tempered look at the mainstream porn industry. As a business, porn exults in leaving nothing to the imagination other than its behind-the-scenes operations, its ugliness, and above all its money – an annual haul of billions in the United States alone. And while Swedish director Ninja Thyberg doesn’t crunch the numbers in “Pleasure,” she rightly sheds a harsh light on the political economy of consumer coal, including how it’s produced.
The story centers on Bella Cherry (psst, that’s not her real name), who is more than ready for her close-up. Newly arrived from Sweden, Bella — played by the stunning Sofia Kappel — hasn’t fully charted her path to success. She’s just getting started, but she’s enterprising and already populating her Instagram account with a stream of selfies. She has vague plans, a car, an agent, and a cohabitation near her work, aka the San Fernando Valley, the epicenter of the industry. What she needs now is experience and perhaps a specialty that will set her apart, restore her reputation, make her famous.
