“I’m using the [porn] industry as an allegory to say something about patriarchy, capitalism, the American Dream,” says director Ninja Thyberg of her searing debut feature
“Her name was Jessica for a long time,” says Ninja Thyberg, director and co-writer of new film Pleasure, while discussing her protagonist. At the eleventh hour, Jessica became Bella Cherry, which subsequently became Thyberg’s first tattoo. “We did it the day before shooting,” she continues, the ‘we’ being her and lead actress Sofia Kappel, who has a matching inscription. Despite the short timeframe, the moniker is wholly significant; it references adult performers Chloe Cherry and Arabella Danger, Lia Williams’s character in 1993’s Dirty Weekend, a cherry tattoo Kappel already had, and the name of Thyberg’s former activist group in Sweden. “So it has this radical feminist connotation, but that’s just for me.”
Developed from a 2013 short, Pleasure is Thyberg’s debut feature film and Kappel’s first major role, and is the result of five years spent researching LA’s adult film scene. Having previously relied on the internet in 2013, for the feature Thyberg was keen to insert herself directly into that world, examining the landscape with the help of those in it. Employing nuance learned during that time, Pleasure becomes a vehicle for unpacking gender roles and power dynamics, as Kappel’s Bella learns what it takes to make it big.
“I was an anti-porn activist when I was a teenager; that’s where feminism was in Sweden at that point,” explains Thyberg, whose interest in the subject inspired her to begin making films, eventually landing on porn through a feminist lens, where she still came up against imbalances. “In the feminist porn people around me were making, we saw those taking part as having agency, but we still thought of women in mainstream porn as being exploited, a victim of the male gaze. We still felt there was ‘good’ and ‘bad’ porn and I became curious – the content was similar, just different aesthetics. I wrote a thesis where I watched a lot of porn and measured different power; I wanted to have facts.”
During this process she became interested in the world between takes, in understanding the on-set atmosphere; what actors did before and after shooting porn and how they viewed themselves, which ultimately led her to LA. “I was genuinely very curious and wanted to learn. I spent five years going back and forth between Sweden and LA, slowly becoming part of their community. It changed me as a person, totally,” she says. “The closer I got and started to identify with them, the more I realised I’m actually saying something [in my work] about power structures and different types of dynamics. I’m using the industry as an allegory to say something about patriarchy, capitalism, the American Dream.”
While the film was mostly cast from the industry – talent agent Mark Spiegler, and actor and director Aiden Starr both play versions of themselves – writing and finding Bella was different. “She felt like this blank space,” explains Thyberg, who met hundreds of women before Kappel. “Everything else was inspired by reality, so the casting process was about finding the character. I wanted someone with a lot of humour, that could be charming. But also someone who has been through stuff, even at 19.” Initially based on Thyberg herself, Bella eventually became an amalgamation of her and Kappel, who joined her in LA to prepare. “Doing these extreme scenes, it was necessary to have the trust but also, for her to be involved. Being aware of her boundaries and talking through everything.”
The scenes in question range from explicit shaving sequences to exhausting sexual violence, with racism and gaslighting seemingly par for the course too. “It was important to be accurate,” says Thyberg, who began writing the film in 2016, “but we shot it in 2018. [Since then] OnlyFans has really changed the industry, #MeToo as well. There’s a power shift happening.” Despite this relative distance, for one actor the film was too realistic. “He said I came too close,” explains the director. “When I showed it to the cast, reactions were divided. It’s always problematic to talk about ‘them’ as one group, of course it’s this mixture, this network of different types of people with different positions and opinions, but most people have been very open and curious. Some men were critical, uncomfortable to see things from a new perspective, but most have turned around, apologised, and now really support the film.”
Pleasure is streaming on MUBI now.
