Pleasure (Ninja Thyberg)

Started by wilder, December 26, 2021, 04:17:39 AM

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wilder



19-year-old Linnéa leaves her small town life in Sweden for Los Angeles to become Jessica, the world's next big porn star. But the road to her goal turns out to be bumpier than she imagined.

Directed by Ninja Thyberg
Written by Ninja Thyberg and Peter Modestij
In theaters May 13, 2022, blu-ray on June 21, 2022

NSFW

QuoteThyberg gained the support of Plattform Produktion, co-founded by Ruben Östlund, the director of Cannes Palme d'Or winner "The Square."

"Ruben is a very big inspiration for me and he has been a mentor."

Watch Thyberg's 2013 short film of the same title on Amazon

wilder


wilder

Blu-ray from Decal Releasing on June 21, 2022

WorldForgot


WorldForgot

Pleasure filmmaker Ninja Thyberg on womanhood, ass destruction, how capital erodes empathy and the horniest Almodóvar film. profile by Charles Bramesco

QuoteStarting at the beginning—the short that played at Cannes in 2013—what made that double-anal scene, which reappears as part of the feature version, your starting point for this project?

Ninja Thyberg: I wrote a thesis on pornography when I studied gender, and I had to watch a lot of porn for analysis, looking at all these different aspects of how porn is made and shot. I saw a double-anal scene during this time, and became curious. "That must be so painful," I was thinking. "I don't know how painful it is, but it can't be pleasurable." I wanted to know more about why someone would do this, the motivation. That's the beginning of the idea.

Around then, I also saw a film called Weapons of Ass Destruction, and that was so on-point with the aggressive tone I was seeing in the male gaze. It's not even trying to hide the aggression toward the female body. Ass destruction! It's not saying, 'Oh, she likes dicks in her ass so much she wants two of them.' It's about destroying. I was fascinated by this.

What are your thoughts on other non-pornographic films set in the porn industry?

This—from today's contemporary perspective, with a female point-of-view—hasn't been done before. Boogie Nights, for instance, that's in the '70s. It's a different world. I think people are more comfortable dealing with porn when it's not part of the here and now. You don't have to deal with your own porn use, or your place in the business. I haven't found much inspiration in other films about pornography, anything I'd want to be similar to. They mostly showed me what I don't want to do.

I've spent so much time getting to know this world and thinking about how to do it justice properly. Anyone doing this without spending that time, you're going to get things wrong, and I'm not sure a lot of people who have made movies about this topic are willing to spend that time. I'm hoping Pleasure might open doors for more films about porn in the future, because it's absurd: how much porn we consume, what a big part of our culture it is, and how little we address it. It's a media double standard. It's hard to show this in a theatrical film, but very easy to go home and see it on your computer. I hope that changes.

[...]

Very diplomatic. Last thing: do you remember the first movie you saw that made you want to direct your own movies?

It was Almodóvar, Bad Education, when Gael García Bernal is playing a woman referred to as a "transvestite" in the film, the terminology being different today. But seeing Bernal dressed up and in makeup, I was so turned on. I remember I felt so horny, seeing a male body so beautiful, portrayed in the way I felt I'd only seen women portrayed. It made me realize, "Oh, this is what it's like for men all the time. Why do I never get to see this?"

In our culture, men aren't often objectified for women—I think it's more common to see gay men objectified for other men. I see less of that with heterosexual men, and I figured I had to create an image like that. A lot of my previous work had also been about finding ways of seeing men. Pleasure does not mainly focus on men as sexual objects, but I did try to turn the camera around.