The girl is there, sitting on the couch. Her eyes languish and her moist lips call for the debauchery of naked bodies. She is about to indulge in the pleasures of the flesh, until the director asks her to lean a little more forward, to shift her foot five centimeters and, above all, to take a good look at the camera. Because it is with the guy behind her screen that she is actually about to make love. Bella Cherry – surname which, obviously, was not attributed to her by her parents – is a porn actress. A newbie in the business, just 19 years old, just landed in the city of angels in her native Sweden to become the next big star in the industry to be marked with an X. And her ambition has no limits. limits than those it sets itself.
Pleasure tells us a lie. That of an industry that seeks by all means to stir up our pleasure. To do this, the Swedish director and screenwriter Ninja Thyberg, who signs here her first feature film, begins by giving us a glimpse of the fake. She reminds us of all the illusions with which the pornography industry lulls us, then shows us the real and all that it has little sensual, to then install a — forgive us the image, particularly apropos — goes back and forth between the two.
At the center of her artistic choices, there is of course her heroine, whom she hypersexualizes or desexualizes to better chip away at the veneer of porn. The make-up—excessive, of course—is a mask that Bella puts on and takes off not just on set, but on the ubiquitous portrayal of herself. The recurring motifs of mirrors and screens highlight this duality and show us the nuance between the perception of oneself and the image that one chooses to give to others.
Height of hypocrisy
As expected for a film of this type, we cannot denounce the failings of porn without pinning down the dubious practices behind the scenes. The first to pass is that of legality. Bella, filmed with her identity card and the day’s newspaper in her hands, must prove that she is of legal age and that she is going to run around freely like one proves that a hostage is still alive. The height of hypocrisy, because his freedom is as artificial as his moans in front of the camera. No matter what was exposed to her before she signed the contract, to say no is to be fired. And when you consent, you have to consent to always more.
In this regard, we can only take our hat off to the main actress, Sofia Kappel. Also a newcomer, she carries the film with a solid interpretation and a hell of a lot of guts, because some of the things you see on screen, she really suffers for the sake of the direction. The result is raw and as realistic as one could hope for. On the other hand, the shock to inflict on the spectator would have deserved to be more violent given the subject. This is probably not the material that was missing for this.
Ninja Thyberg, on the other hand, manages to play it all down a bit thanks to a few funny scenes. The deep throat session on a poor banana who hadn’t asked anyone hit the mark while showing the heights of ridiculousness that the representation of a fantasy can reach in an environment designed by and for male pleasure.
Unlike the recent Noémie says yeswhose rating prohibiting access to those under 16 while the film tries to warn a teenage audience remains questionable, Pleasure, with its frontal nudity and (not all) non-simulated acts featuring real porn actors, leaves no doubt about its classification by the authorities. Nevertheless, it will give relevant material to any adult who goes to see it in order to shed light on the failings of pornography for a young generation too easily exposed to this content.