A director explores the world of porn in an initiatory film without illusions

Hollywood attracted all starlets in the 40s who dreamed of filming next to Clark Gable, John Wayne or Humphrey Bogart. Today porn is enough to try your luck in the Mecca of cinema. Bella Cherry, a young Swede, goes to Hollywood with the goal of becoming a porn star. Pleasure, noticed at the Sundance Festival and the Audience Award at the Deauville Festival, comes out Wednesday, October 20. Between Inside Deep Throat (on the set of Deep Throat), and Showgirls by Paul Veroheven: the lost illusions of today.

A 20-year-old Swedish girl arrives in Los Angeles with the goal of becoming a porn star. She goes from studio to studio, does tests. All producers and directors note its determination and acceptance of all requests. These, more and more pushed into humiliation and violence, cause an addiction, then a repulsion from which “Bella Cherry” will not come out unscathed.

The history of porn appeared very early on in cinema, in 1975, with Exhibition, where the actress Sylvia Bourdon exposed her vocation to shoot erotic films, then pornographic. Recently, Inside Deep Throat recounted the ordeal endured by Linda Lovelace on the set of Deep Throat, one of the biggest successes in porn, and in cinema, in 1975. Pleasure extends the subject in a fiction which also looks at the exacerbated careerism of women entrepreneurs, ready to do anything to achieve their end. We think of Showgirl by Paul Veroheven located in the world of Las Vegas dancers.

Pleasure arrives on the screens at a time when the condition of women is questioned in professional fields, in particular artistic (see Big eyes by Tim Burton) and athletic (Slalom of Charlene Favier), with growing complaints of sexual harassment and rape. In Pleasure, the new recruit, consenting in all respects, sinks more and more into the process that she herself has started. If everyone is benevolent around her, and her partners simulate the domination and humiliation they inflict on her, she is filmed accepting them, for real, even while feigning pleasure.

More and more violent and degrading, the actions will disgust the aspiring porn star promised to a bright future. Ninja Thyberg’s debut film gives a proper demonstration of the process, but nevertheless stretches the subject a bit by repeatedly multiplying the test scenes. Even if there is a progression in the course of his anti-heroine, the effect of repetition could have been pruned and given more rhythm to a subject otherwise at the heart of the news.

Kind : Drama
Director : Ninja thyberg
Actors : Sofia Kappel, Revika Reustle, Evelyn Claire
Country : United States
Duration : 1h49
Exit : October 20, 2021
Distributer : The Jokers

Forbidden to under 16s with warning

Several scenes of violence and sexual assault are likely to seriously disturb the public.

Synopsis : A 20-year-old Swedish girl arrives in Los Angeles with the goal of a career in the porn industry. Her determination and ambition propel her to the top of a world where pleasure quickly gives way to risk and toxicity.