This Swedish movie was the biggest surprise of the Sundance film festival: it’s essentially a film about a young woman who gets her soul destroyed by the entertainment machine. This has been done to death, but the film transposes that old narrative into the porn industry in modern LA. It’s a debut feature from Ninja Thyberg, who made a short that inspired the feature film.

Sofia Kappel plays Linnéa; her porn name is Bella Cherry. She is a somewhat naive Swedish 19-year-old who flees to LA in order to make it big. Her background is only hinted at, from the horrific to the normal: the truth is never revealed. The title Pleasure obviously has various meanings in relation to the film, but it’s uttered first when she is asked “Business or pleasure?” at Customs on her entry to LAX. She very quickly attempts to build up her career, but any dream of instant porn stardom is dashed pretty quickly. She soon starts to navigate how to get the right jobs, what type of porn to do (did she do anal too early in her career?), how to build up a bigger Instagram following so she has a bigger chance of getting the star-making agent, etc.

Thyberg initially became interested in porn from a more outdated anti-porn feminist approach, but quickly adopted a more sex-positive approach, whilst at the same time being critical of the power dymamics and abuse within the industry. A very obvious but smart thing she does is that when the film is very explicit, she turns the camera’s POV over to Bella, to create a female gaze in a world where there often isn’t one. The film is still extremely graphic, but it makes the film a lot more accessible to an audience that I suspect will be primarily female.

The most interesting scenes are those showing the contrast between shoots. For example, she does some rough scenes directed by a guy involving two guys, and she can’t handle it and decides to stop. They are nice to her and want to make sure she is OK, but when she is not willing to continue with the shoot, the director and actors turns on her and say something along the lines of “you aren’t getting paid for the work you’ve done”. Earlier, in an S&M film she does for Kink.com, it’s shot by a female crew and it’s as professional a shoot as you can imagine.

The film also quite brilliantly depicts the backstabbing nature of the entertainment industry, and the depths people will get ahead. Bella at first lives with a group of girls, and it’s a light sort of slumber-party atmosphere with her roomate Joy (Revika Anne Reustle). She clearly has a bit of thing for Joy, although nothing happens between the two. There is a breaking point at a shoot where they are filming scenes with real-life pornstar Lance Hart, here renamed Caesar Rex, and the way Bella just denies the reality of what Caesar did to Joy while the camera is on so she can continue the shoot is heartbreaking.

One of the more contrived aspects of the film is that there is this bitchy porn star Ava (Evelyn Claire), who is the type of star Bella wants to be. Mark Spiegler plays himself, and Evelyn is a “Spiegler Girl,” a group of stars under contract to agent Spiegler who are the most well-paid and respected in the industry. Ava is the bitchiest of bitches who just openly mocks Bella at her first big photoshoot, where Bella is trying to figure out the best “sexy pose” and even takes a photo. Joy has Bella’s back. However, despite it being clearly contrived, the final showdown between the two might be the most harrowing scene in the film: the way the two just go at each other, and the way that Bella is able to turn the tables on Ava to advance her career, is just as riveting as it is horrific.

The entire film hinges on Sofia Kappel, who has never acted before but gives a stunning performance. She has the right mixture of the naivete required for the role, inner conflict, and determination to make it by any means necessary, and the film never passes judgment on her decision. Pleasure is one of the better films to result from the fallout from #MeToo, because whilst having all the very legitimate criticism of mistreatment of women in the entertainment industry, it doesn’t play into a simplistic notion that woman don’t have any agency and are always helpless victims.

The fact that woman feel the need to partake in some of these situations is a byproduct of the same boys-club culture in the entertainment industry, but the film never takes the easy way out in its condemnation. It’s a film that certainly won’t be an easy sell, but hopefully an indie distributor that is more adventurous than some will grab it—at the same time, I could see Pornhub picking it up for its premium channel… although some of their subscribers will be very disappointed.

Pleasure premiered at Sundance, when this piece was originally written. In cinemas on Wednesday, June 15th. On Curzon Home Cinema on Friday, July 1st. On all major VoD platforms on Friday, July 15rth