'Pleasure' Review: A Raw and Real Inside Drama About the L.A. Porn Industry
'Pleasure' Review: A Raw and Real Inside Drama About the L.A. Porn Industry
Ninja Thyberg's documentary-like drama, starring radiant newcomer Sofia Kappel as a young woman rising through the industry, takes the measure of life in the age of extreme porn as few movies have.
Owen Gleiberman, provided by
FacebookTwitterEmail
Director: Ninja Thyberg
With: Sofia Kappel, Revika Anne Reustle, Evelyn Claire, Chris Cock, Dana Dearmond, Kendra Spade, Jason Toler, Lance Hart, Mark Spiegler.
If you had to say what the biggest difference is between the porn industry of the 1970s and the porn industry of today, you’d probably start with the obvious and overwhelming fact that people used to watch porn in grungy movie theaters and now access it on the Internet. You might talk about how even though the porn industry is still driven by a star system, with brand names who treat themselves like multi-media commodities, the larger cosmos of porn has never been more squalidly democratized, with porn festering more than ever in a grimy gray zone between “professional” and “amateur” — between those who do it for a living and those who dip into it for stray cash, desperate circumstances, or simply for kicks.