“Pleasure”, the underside of American porn

Romanticism is not the subject of Pleasure, Swedish director Ninja Thyberg’s debut film. An absence that is as much about her – a 20-year-old Swede arrives in Los Angeles with the intention of becoming a porn star – as the treatment chosen by the director: dry, arid, cruel, documentary, poles apart from the chosen title . Contrary to its title, Pleasure stages the spectacle of anti-pleasure. The film has its origins in the short film of the same name that the director presented in 2013 at the Critics’ Week at the Cannes Film Festival.

“There are all kinds of people in porn. I have seen grueling sets, but others where everyone thrives. Ninja Thyberg

During his studies at London University, Department of Gender Studies, Ninja Thyberg wrote a dissertation on porn cinema. “I examined the twenty most watched porn clips of 2011 on streaming sites, in order to understand what was playing on the screen: who is taking their clothes off? Who is looking at the camera? All this in order to understand how the power relations between men and women were formed. “ With a central question: that of the place of women… but also that of men.

“Women are never protagonists, they are transformed into objects and, in general, dehumanized. But men are just as important: we rarely see their faces, they do not express any emotion, except, sometimes, during orgasm. The viewer tends more easily to identify with the woman since she expresses her feelings. I was very interested in the actors, in their preparation for a shoot, in everything that concerns the off-camera or what happens next to the film; what we will never see on screen and that I wanted to stage. ”

From 2014, Ninja Thyberg spent five years between Sweden and California, more precisely in the San Fernando Valley, where the “Hollywood of X” is located. There, she meets actresses, actors, directors, producers, agents, assistants … She even goes so far as to stay in one of these model houses, these community houses where porn actresses live together. “There are all kinds of people in porn. I have seen grueling sets, but others where everyone thrives. I stopped looking at actresses as victims. Young girls are exploited, but others make careers. They are very intelligent, strategists, they are business women and sexual athletes. They train hard to accomplish things that ordinary people wouldn’t be able to do. ”

With the exception of the lead actress, the Swedish debutante Sofia Kappel, the actors of Pleasure all belong to the porn industry (actors, producers, agents), most often in their own role. “I envisioned actors from outside the porn industry, but they were never as good as the professionals. “ By participating in the film, the latter also show their desire to denounce the violent practices of many shootings and to obtain better working conditions.