The Porn Star Protagonist In ‘Pleasure’ Is A Woman Of Fascinating Contradictions

This article contains spoilers for “Pleasure.”

Often just the mention of a woman aiming to catapult to the top of the male-dominated porn industry provokes a number of “get it, girl!”-like reactions in today’s more sex-positive era. And understandably, because female sexual agency should be championed and it is a natural right, as is making safe spaces for women to prosper in the sex industry.

So, it makes sense that Bella Cherry (Sofia Kappel), the 19-year-old porn-star-in-the-making at the center of writer-director Ninja Thyberg’s film “Pleasure,” proudly signs her social media posts with “#ProudSlut” and dons a tee with the words “Girls Run Thangs” on it. She’s both coquettish and affirmed — and always, always aware of the power she has to lure the male gaze.

But as Thyberg takes us on Bella’s journey, we learn how the character becomes achingly cognizant of the impositions of that power as well as her own expendability in the business that largely caters to male gratification. And she responds to that in complicated ways.

“Mostly for me, it’s about looking at patriarchy through the eyes of a young woman,” Thyberg told HuffPost. “But it’s also about other inequalities and hierarchies and different classes of society. Since I’ve been working on it for so long, I feel like there’s so many things that I want to talk about or add to it.”

It’s true. Back in 2013, Thyberg gave us the same-titled short film and shot most of the feature-length drama in 2018. By then, she had been researching the porn industry for over 10 years, initially as a self-professed “anti-porn activist” before she was enlightened by feminist porn. So, to say that “Pleasure” was influenced by many different, and sometimes conflicting, ideologies is an understatement.

But that’s also what makes it such a fascinating and complex watch. Bella embraces the…