Critic’s pick
Given that Hollywood and the pornography industry operate practically side by side, with just a few miles of Los Angeles and a few layers of clothing between them, there is a curious lack of contemporary cinema about the business and pleasure of making a business out of pleasure. Athere – but those films use porn as the dramatic backdrop, not the thematic foreground. We’re told by the movies over and over again that we like to watch, except when the close-ups become too extreme.
Certainly, there are bright spots, including Bella’s gig on a BDSM film that is guided by a female director who is sensitive to the pressures of shooting such a thing. And Bella finds a gentle camaraderie with fellow actress Joy , each of the women cannily aware of the fleeting power that their bodies offer. But these moments of independence, of sexual and societal autonomy, are constantly crushed by the demands of what Thyberg positions as an exploitive machine designed to grind.
Thyberg, who in her teenage years was a radical “anti-porn activist” , has made a point of doing her research, going so far as to convince a handful of real-life porn professionals to appear inas either facsimiles or themselves . But there is a deliberate, relentless antiseptic-ness tothat can be punishing, leaving even the most prurient of porn apostates to wonder if this is the whole and naked truth.