is a film about the porn business unlike anything you’ve seen before. It opens on the sound of fucking, spitting and slapping and gets steadily more grim from there, taking the viewer on an unremittingly hardcore ride through the industry’s darkest corners. Directed by Swedish filmmaker Ninja Thyberg in her feature debut, it’s most certainly an achievement of some kind, perhaps even an important one. I’m just not sure who would sign up to watch it.
A former anti-porn activist, Thyberg made her film with a cast of industry professionals, and it’s emphatically X-rated. Big swinging dicks are everywhere you look, as are the sweating paunches of the guys who wield them – butis just as notable for what it doesn’t show.
At the centre of Thyberg’s film is Bella, an aspiring adult-film star freshly arrived in LA from Sweden. Bella is played with astonishing poise by Sofia Kappel, a first-time actor who, incredibly, applied for the part after her CBT therapist suggested she try doing something that made her “uncomfortable”.
As Bella makes her way through the industry, she learns that the power to say no also has the power to hurt her career. Pushing aside her personal boundaries to get herself noticed, she seeks work in increasingly hardcore shoots. An initial BDSM gig goes well, but she soon finds herself in trouble when acting out a gang-rape scenario on a shoot with three male performers.
This is entirely the point, of course, and most likely a big part of why Thyberg’s film has met with anger among industry professionals, including some members of the cast. In the world thatdepicts, consent is respected only as long as it doesn’t disrupt the normal functioning of power, a state of affairs which Thyberg lays bare in scenes that resonate far beyond the film’s porn-biz setting, and echo some of the response to the #MeToo movement.