Ninja Thyberg on Pleasure, porn and power structures in society

Pleasure has its world premiere at Sundance’s World Cinema Dramatic Competition, seven years after the screening of Ninja Thyberg’s short film of the same name which went on to receive the Canal Plus Award from the Cannes Critics’ Week in 2014.

Pleasure is Thyberg’s bold look at the shadowy world of the adult film industry in Los Angeles from a female gaze, used as “a metaphor to examine gender and power structures in our society”, according to the director who wrote the script with Peter Modestij.

In the film, the newly arrived Swedish girl Bella Cherry lands in L.A. and coyly answers a custom’s officer that she’s there for pleasure, not business. Her dream is to become the next big porn star. She soon realises that her ‘dream’ is different from what she had expected, and she is forced to choose between abiding by the men’s rules or showing solidarity with her female friends.

Leading the cast - mostly from the adult industry - is Swedish debut actress Sofia Kappel.

The film was produced by Plattform Produktion’s co-founder Erik Hemmendorff, with Markus Waltå and Eliza Jones, in co-production with Lemming Film in the Netherlands, Logical Pictures in France, Film i Väst, SVT, and support among others from Nordisk Film & TV Fond. SF Studios handles Nordic distribution and Versatile international sales.

Pleasure was selected for Cannes but couldn't screen there due to the pandemic. Now you're having the world premiere in Sundance and the film also screens in your home town of Göteborg. How do you feel about such an exposure at top festivals?
Ninja Thyberg: It’s a huge honour of course. Because of Covid, Cannes didn’t happen, but then Cannes and Sundance were my main goals.
Attending Cannes was important because of the topic of the adult industry. My dream was for the film’s actors to come to Cannes, walk on the red carpet and let people treat them as regular actors. But as the film takes place in the US, I’m also very happy to have the film world premiere at Sundance. Then it’s very special for me to have the film screen in Göteborg, my home town where I’ve shown all my films. I’m very spoilt. I got everything I wanted.

Pleasure is set in the porn industry in L.A. How would you describe the film?
NT: It is a behind-the-scenes look at the power structure in the porn sector, shown from a female perspective. It’s a longer version of my short film Pleasure. Since 2013, I’ve been interested in the subject and travelled to L.A. to research the topic to see what it looks from the other side. The script is based on the people I met. It was shot mostly in L.A., with a cast consisting mostly of people from the porn industry. Some play themselves, then actors play other roles, like agents.

Why did you want to bring that specific and taboo universe to the screens?
NT: I’ve been interested in the subject since I was 15. I’ve approached it from different angles, including an art project, and I was part of a feminist porn project ten years ago. So the inspiration came when I was at university and studied porn. I wanted to know who are these people, what happens after the scenes, how do they cut, what happens between the scenes etc. I was curious and started to investigate the subject. I used my graduation short film from the Stockholm Film Academy like a kind of pilot to attract attention and get into film.

How much time exactly did you spend in L.A. and how difficult was it to enter the adult industry?
NT: It took a long time. Being a woman actually helped. I wasn’t a threat. But the most important thing was that I had an honest and open approach. I did a lot of interviews, made them understand that I was genuine and gradually gained their trust. I first went to L.A. in 2014 for two weeks, just to have an introduction and make the first interviews. I came back in 2016 and stayed half a year. That was my longest period. Then we started shooting in 2018. We shot in different blocks and the last shooting day was in December 2019.

Sofia Kappel carries the film on her shoulders, being literally in every scene. How did you find her, and how much preparation was necessary to make her feel comfortable with her role?
NT: Sofia doesn’t come from the porn industry at all and is not a trained actress. She was cast among 2,000 girls and was a true revelation. It took her around eight months to get to know the industry. We talked about all the boundaries. On set each actor had to read the script, and when we started to shoot, we established the situation as authentically as possible and they had to improvise.

I guess you set some parameters in terms of what to show or not…
NT: We knew there would be genitals, as we needed to show what Bella’s job is about. With Bella, I often focused on her face and what she’s looking at, reversing the gaze.

Was your intention with the film to break the taboo of speaking about porn?
NT: Definitely. I think it’s important to have an honest and open debate about porn, which for the moment exists in a parallel world of shadows. I wanted to show the boundaries about what’s possible to show on screen. Generally speaking, there is a lack of good stories about sex, which is too bad as it’s a huge part of our life.

Did your views about the industry change after you got an insider's look?
NT: Since I got to know these people and understand them, it’s been like a bumpy road. I started from a feminist perspective, anti-porn, seeing it as a male dominated industry, but then I became interested in the need of representation, of women in sexuality, which is positive.

As this is your first feature length, how was the learning curve of working on this film, and how was your collaboration with your key creative crew - set designer, costume designer, DoP, editor?
NT: I had done a lot of shorts before, and went to various film schools. Since the process for this film was so special, I had to find the method along the way, how to film it. I had to invent ways of working with the crew. We did workshops, had a lot of discussions. I had to slowly introduce the crew to that world, and help them go through the journey that I had taken myself, with a crash course. It was a shock to many people. But everyone was super dedicated, especially my DoP Sophie Winqvist with whom I had done two films before, With one of the editors - Amalie Westerlin Tjellesen, we had gone to film school together and did our graduation film together. It was good to be with close friends.

How was the collaboration with Plattform Produktion?
NJ: Wonderful. Ruben [Östlund, co-founder of the production company] is my mentor. It was a luxury to have him give me feedback as a director.

What's next for you?
NT: I’ve started to develop my next project. I have a feature and a hybrid project, also on the same subject..