With Pleasure, the Swedish director reveals the backstage of professional pornography in the United States. Through its 20-year-old protagonist, Pleasure criticizes the male gaze that dominates this X industry. All this, with a frontal staging, which dares and takes risks.
Pleasure : a shocking work on the American X industry
We don't see the first sequence of Pleasure. While the names of the director, producers and actresses scroll in the opening credits, a sexual act takes place without image. But we understand that rails are artificial, simulated. Then comes a soft and angelic face, in total contrast with the harshness of the sound sequence. She tells the airport that she is traveling to the United States "for pleasure" and not for work. The feature film launches hostilities on its risky theme: pornography. 
Bella Cherry is a 20-year-old woman from Sweden. She embarks on a journey to the land of Uncle Sam with one goal in mind: to become one of the biggest pornstars in the industry. For this, it will have to impose itself, by pushing its moral limits ever further, in an environment gangrenous by the penis and dominated by the masculine.
To the end
After only ten minutes, we know that Pleasure is already a sensational experience. The young woman realizes her first pornographic scene, with everything that can lead to this journey: doubt necessarily, passion and the desire to "perform", in the antinomic sense of "having fun". The immaculate white sets and the young actress blonder than Marylin Monroe make the scene more playful than disturbing. This luminous atmosphere will quickly decline as the limits that the young woman had set for herself will collapse. 
Through the eyes of its young protagonist (intelligent, strong and aware of her precariousness), filmmaker Ninja Thyberg confronts the male and female gaze. Thus, the staging recalls an old adage of cinematography: the camera is a weapon. In this case, a weapon of male domination. For a first film, it is a risky subject but admirably treated. Situations never follow one another gratuitously and enjoy a rather remarkable sense of proportion. Witness the mantra of the heroine, repeated with her companion of a roommate of porn actress: "We take power", which goes from galvanizing credo to chimera in an environment where money and man are at the top.
The female gaze
In this demonstration of female gaze, the filmmaker chains shocking scenes, without any censorship, not hesitating to show in front of the camera penises and uncomfortable sexual positions. In particular a so-called "rough" scene where the blows rain and the actress seems to suffer, in a staging "POV", a real rape in meeting. The ban on under-16s, coupled with a warning from the CNC, is not undeserved. 
But where the Swedish director could have fallen into a banal anti-pornography pamphlet, it is instead a very documented, realistic story, where real stars of the industry are staged. Thus, Mark Spiegler, one of the most famous agents of the field has a key role in the film, Bella Cherry doing everything to be a "Spiegler girl", guaranteeing her the expected fame. Ninja Thyberg confirmed after the screening: "I had to work with them to understand how they work. Most of them made me feel very welcome. Some became friends, some didn't." So many elements anchored in reality that reinforce the feeling of permanent discomfort.
Sofia Kappel, the revelation of Pleasure
Pleasure , however, is struggling with its status as the first film. If it is not so marked, the scenario is quite expected and sometimes lacks madness on its construction. We would like to enter more into the psyche of the characters, feel more than see the mental decrepitude of characters who internalize their condition as objects of desire. And it's not a few crude dialogues that will be able to catch up with this aspect. It definitely lacks a seasoned eye of a director to achieve a great sensory and definitive work. On the Swedish filmmaker's side, it will come. We will rather remember the hallucinatory performance of Sofia Kappel, a true revelation who embodies the film on her broad shoulders. Fully committed to the concept of male domination in the industry and moreover, in art, Pleasure does not forget the cinema and is a shocking and endist experience. A feature film sometimes too arty and easy, but which, for a first film, is a beautiful risk-taking because of its raw and uncompromising realism. The kind that is not easily forgotten. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cshSy56vZm0
