Pleasure
Short description
Ninja Thyberg wrote and directed Pleasure, a drama about a nineteen-year-old Swedish woman who leaves her small home town for Los Angeles to become an adult film performer under the name Bella Cherry. She breaks into the industry fairly quickly, but the work turns out to be harsher and more competitive than she expected, and the people around her make clear that advancement depends on how much she is willing to accept. The film follows her efforts to build a career inside a closed and demanding world.
The cast is led by Sofia Kappel as Bella Cherry, with Zelda Morrison, Tee Reel, Evelyn Claire, Chris Cock and Dana DeArmond in supporting roles. Released in 2021, Pleasure runs 108 minutes and was made for about two million dollars, a modest figure for a feature shot across several countries; it was produced through companies based in Sweden, the Netherlands, France and the Netherlands Antilles. It is Thyberg's first feature as director and writer, expanding a short she had made earlier on the same subject.
On IMDb it holds 6.3 out of 10 from around 26,000 votes, and on TMDB 6.3 out of 10 from 825 votes. A film critics' rating of 7.3 out of 10 from 123 reviews places it noticeably higher with reviewers than with general audiences, suggesting the film was better received by critics than by the wider viewing public.
What's left behind the scenes
- Many of the actors involved in the film have, at one time or another, appeared in pornography or were otherwise associated with the Los Angeles porn industry. Director and screenwriter Ninja Thyberg met many of them while gathering material for the future film and writing the screenplay, and discovered that they improvised brilliantly.
- Sofia Kappel's (who played Bella) first appearance on screen. She went to the audition as part of a CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy – a form of psychotherapy focused on changing a patient’s thoughts, behaviors, and emotions) course.
- The project began with an essay by Ninni Tuber on the pornography industry, written for a gender studies course. She further explored this theme in her 2013 short film “Pleasure,” which won an award at the Cannes Film Festival.
- The film was shot over 25 days in September-October 2018, but some scenes were reshot in Sweden a year later.
- This was Bill Bailey’s last film (where he played Adam). The film premiered almost two years after his untimely death as a result of a fall from a hotel balcony in Mexico City.
- Initially, the film was acquired at the Sundance Film Festival by the American independent entertainment company A24 (which specializes in the production of films and television programs, as well as film distribution). A24 planned to release two versions of the film – the director’s cut and a censored version, but Ninni Tuber naturally disliked the latter option. Ultimately, in October 2021, A24 sold the film to Neon (an independent film production and distribution company), which released only the director’s cut in May 2022.
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