Pleasure
Neon | Release Date: May 13, 2022 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
75
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 24 Critic Reviews
Positive:
20
Mixed:
4
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
90
Los Angeles TimesRobert DanielsMay 13, 2022
A stirring debut by both Thyberg and Kappel and a daring picture that makes you love it, not for tawdry reasons but for all of the truthful crimes, perils and delights it covers. Read full review
90
The New York TimesManohla DargisMay 12, 2022
Excess is the sine qua non of porn, so that’s expected. What is more surprising — and welcome — is how Thyberg engages feminist issues like a woman’s agency while making you laugh, freaking you out and prompting you to squirm. Read full review
85
Paste MagazineNatalia KeoganMay 12, 2022
Swedish director Ninja Thyberg’s Pleasure, however, isn’t afraid to delve into the behind-the-scenes reality of creating mass-marketed porn—all without pivoting into a long-winded metaphor or cautionary screed. As such, the writer/director’s observations are unvarnished and exact, detailing the nuances of one of America’s greatest cultural tenets while adhering to an admittedly familiar cinematic premise of a rising star in a tumultuous career. Read full review
85
TheWrapAlonso DuraldeFeb 4, 2021
It’s not an exposé on what pornography does to women as much as a harrowing examination of what the workplace expects and allows from women and men. Read full review
83
The A.V. ClubBrent SimonMay 12, 2022
“Shocking” is a word that gets thrown around too frequently. But it’s all too fitting for Swedish director Ninja Thyberg’s Pleasure, a graphic, gripping, and unflinching drama charting the rocky rise of an ambitious newcomer to the adult film industry. Read full review
83
IndieWireDavid EhrlichFeb 2, 2021
Pleasure — which is almost by default the most knowing and honest commercial film that’s been made about the modern American porn industry — is determined to avoid framing pleasure and business in binary terms. Read full review
83
The PlaylistGregory EllwoodFeb 2, 2021
What’s strikingly revolutionary in Pleasure is how Thyberg’s gaze provides Bella’s story much-needed context by embracing the mundane aspects of this particular world. Read full review
80
The TelegraphRobbie CollinJun 17, 2022
Perhaps some blind spots were only to be expected: there’s more to this topic than a single feature could possibly cover, particularly a debut one. But Thyberg knows which angles she wants to work – and my goodness, does she go for it. Read full review
80
CineVueChristopher MachellJun 17, 2022
Pleasure is not a morally proscriptive film and seeks neither to venerate nor condemn pornography, but to depict its hollowing effect on those who make it. The film’s title is not accidental; at a time when porn is freely and ubiquitously available, the price of gratification may be cheap, but there is always a cost to be paid. Read full review
80
The IndependentClarisse LoughreyJun 16, 2022
Kappel’s astounding performance constantly draws the film’s energy back to her in a way that ensures the audience is never in doubt of Linnea’s own agency, even in her most vulnerable moments. Read full review
80
Little White LiesSavina PetkovaJun 13, 2022
By replacing one, more earthly transcendence, with another, Pleasure confirms itself as a film that lays bare the paradoxes of complying to a flawed system, and critiques the commercialisation of bodies with orgasmic poeticism. Read full review
80
Screen RantNadir SamaraMay 16, 2022
Explorations of sex are a dime a dozen in Hollywood but Thyberg isn’t interested in sex, she is interested in people who are interested in sex. There is no judgment and no fetishizing. (The film even has time for a boner joke.) What more could one ask for in a film such as this? Read full review
80
Film ThreatLorry KiktaFeb 2, 2021
I really appreciate the bold narrative that Thyberg and co-writer Peter Modestij crafted. It is sex-positive, it takes no prisoners, and it grabs your attention from word one to the final frame. Read full review
80
Screen DailyWendy IdeFeb 2, 2021
This impressive, unflinching debut from Ninja Thyberg eschews the victim narrative which tends to shadow stories focussing on women in the porn industry, instead following Bella’s cool-headed navigation of this treacherous and frequently exploitative world. Read full review
80
VarietyOwen GleibermanFeb 2, 2021
It’s a coldly artful and explicit piece of anthropological voyeurism, and its subject is what pornography has become — what it is, what it’s selling, why the people who perform in it are drawn to it, what it does for them, what it does to them, and what it’s doing to all of us. Read full review
79
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzMay 16, 2022
As a conversation-starter, though, Pleasure hits all the spots – and sometimes soars far beyond thanks to the work of Kappel, whose performance is absolutely committed, fearless and entrancing. Read full review
75
Original-CinLiam LaceyMay 19, 2022
Once you get past the clinical mis-en-scène and the voyeuristic surprise, the story is the usual A Star Is Born showbiz rollercoaster of big dreams, success, and disillusionment. Read full review
75
RogerEbert.comKatie RifeMay 13, 2022
Thyberg keeps her cards close throughout Pleasure, using the film’s verité framing to obscure the extent of her involvement as a director. The film feels even-handed, in the sense that its fly-on-the-wall style lets situations speak for themselves. Read full review
75
Slant MagazinePat BrownMay 10, 2022
The film fiercely homes in at the moral perversity of an industry at a particular intersection of capitalism, patriarchy, and digital-age spectacle. Read full review
65
The AtlanticDavid SimsMay 21, 2022
I think Thyberg could have found even more to mine in a fully nonfiction movie; the biggest drawback of Pleasure is that it follows a fabricated protagonist who’s remote and one-dimensional. Bella is so defined by her stock story that it’s hard to grasp what’s motivating her beyond a desire for success, and the film gets bogged down in this staid narrative. Read full review
60
The GuardianPeter BradshawJun 15, 2022
Pleasure doesn’t take a doomily disapproving line on porn, and real pornstars and agents are given cameos. Yet neither is it necessarily celebratory or porn-positive. The people in charge are overwhelmingly male and Thyberg shows how the power relations in the business are really the same as they ever were. Read full review
60
The Hollywood ReporterLeslie FelperinFeb 15, 2021
Throughout, Thyberg switchbacks between humor and humiliation with unsettling abruptness, but withholds judgement of the characters' choices to create an ethical Rorschach test, prompting reactions that may be more revealing than the film itself. Read full review
60
The GuardianAdrian HortonFeb 2, 2021
It’s an often subtle (even in its many XXX-rated shots) and surreptitious study of an industry built on explicit, aggressive imagery, an arresting film which, though it doesn’t stick the landing, thankfully delineates between the legitimate work of adult film performers and the toxicity, misogyny and abuse the male-dominated industry allows to fester and lacerate. Read full review
50
New York Magazine (Vulture)Alison WillmoreMay 13, 2022
Thyberg clearly set out to create a hysteria-free look at the industry, taking on the challenge of critiquing structural issues without casting judgments on the idea of having sex on camera. Pleasure succeeds at this, though not without a cost. It’s a clear-eyed treatment of porn wedded to a character study that never comes to life. Read full review
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