Ambition, Identity, and the Cost of Fame — Unpacking the Many Faces of Pleasure
Pleasure, the Swedish drama written and directed by Ninja Thyberg, was one of the films that premiered at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. It was not promoted as a glamorous, sensational film about the adult industry. It was promoted as a film about the unrelenting and extreme focus of one’s ambition. It is about the pursuit of identity and the collisions that occur with the personal and social structures of power, performance, and the desire for control.
Pleasure takes us along with 19-year old Linnea, who leaves her small Swedish hometown for Los Angeles, with the ambition of recreating herself as a top adult film performer, Bella Cherry, and leaving her old identity behind forever. Linnea’s ambition is powerfully seductive. Yet, under the neon lights of Castifornia, one must contend to the value, affirmation, and compulsion to relentlessly reconstruct a self that capitalism is willing to decline, suspend, or dispose. Pleasure is not about the erotism that Linnea performs. It is about the emotionally cold machinery of a young woman who is learning to construct power in an industry that is endlessly redefining what power means.
The Narrative Behind the Surprise
The director chose to avoid judgment and instead chose to embrace complexity in the film Pleasure. The movie follows Bella as she advances through the ranks of the adult film industry in Los Angeles, beginning as a naive newcomer and evolving to someone who learns how imbalance control overlays and identity intertwine with work.
From the very beginning, Bella’s confident and strategic mentality regarding her goals is almost analytical. She claims she is not a victim, she is a strategist, but moments of fragility do inevitably damage her. The heart of the story is her friendship with Joy, another performer. Joy is a system opposing character, with a sense of disappointment and sadness. Yet, she is the only person in the system who is in complete control.
Most of the audience was not shocked by the explicit premise, but by emotional transparency. The director is a master of empathy. The camera captures psychological battles and frames deeply uncomfortable emotions and burdens with complete attention. Bella’s experience shifts away from the adult industry and centers on the universal struggle for women across all sectors: negotiating for power in male-dominated spaces.
Sofia Kappel’s Breakout — Reality Meets Fiction
Sofia Kappel, a first-time actor, had never appeared on screen before Pleasure and was a focal point of the raw energy radiating from the film. Thyberg spent over a year casting, interviewing non-professionals to find those who could provide authenticity without cynicism. Kappel, then 22, came to the audition with both innocence and steel — a rare combination that made Bella believable.
In her interviews, Kappel has stated that the emotional demands of filming Pleasure were great. She wasn’t playing Bella; she was becoming her in controlled doses. “I had to step into her ambition,” she told The Guardian, “and then step back before it consumed me.” The production team employed strict safety protocols and had intimacy coordinators on every scene that contained sensitive material to ensure that emotional boundaries were respected.
Her performance received and continues to receive numerous comparisons to Carey Mulligan in Promising Young Woman and Margot Robbie in I, Tonya — actresses who expose ambition’s darker price. Kappel’s story, however, did not come to a close with new, critical acclaim. She has spent months inwardly processing the way audiences projected onto her, confounding her personal identity with that of Bella in a way that deeply mirrored the film.
Fan Theories: Was It All an Act?
Following the movie’s worldwide release, various online platforms began analyzing the final act. In the final scenes, Bella obtains the professional status she so desperately craved, but her expression conveys a different message: pride tinged with dissatisfaction. Some fans speculated that the entire story could be viewed as a performance within a performance, that Bella had never left Sweden, but was merely imagining her journey, fading away into the mediatic fantasy.
Others speculated that the final frame of the film, a long, unwavering close-up of Bella as she stares into the camera, captured her final reclamation of power. For some it was a celebrated victory; for others, a haunting defeat. In the Reddit threads and across various film analysis forums, viewers wrestled with the question of whether Bella had “won”, or merely mastered the art of accompanying surrender with a façade of strength.
During a Q&A at the Gothenburg Film Festival, Ninja Thyberg addressed the multitude of interpretations. “I never wanted to give Bella a moral ending,” Thyberg explained. “On paper, she succeeds, but the question is — what has she lost to fit the part she thought she wanted?” She noted that the lack of closure was purposeful. “The moment we label her empowered or exploited, we lose the point. Real life is both.”
Thyberg also shot a different ending, one that few know of. In early drafts, Bella returned home to Sweden, disillusioned but freer. It included a quiet scene of her walking down a snowy street, anonymous once again. Though the test audiences felt that ending showed empathy, they commented that it softened the film’s edge. Thyberg finally chose the haunting stare, certain that it was one that forced the audience to confront their discomfort.
Sofia Kappel later acknowledged that she liked the ending where “it’s like she’s daring the audience to ask themselves why they watched. That look isn’t for the camera; it’s for the viewer’s conscience.”
The responses to Pleasure’s premiere were mixed. There were those who celebrated it as a feminist work of art, while others complained it was overly aggressive. There was a debate in the Swedish media about whether it was critiquing exploitation while performing it. Yet, critics across the globe appreciated the psychological honesty.
In interviews, Kappel and Thyberg emphasized that the goal was not to shock, but to humanize. “The industry is a backdrop,” Thyberg said, “but this story could take place in fashion, film, or music — anywhere people trade authenticity for applause and receive applause for a counterfeit version of themselves.”.
Among audiences, especially younger viewers, the film became a conversation piece about agency. TikTok viewers used clips of Bella’s determined expressions to discuss themes of hustle culture and self-branding. “It’s not just about adult work,” one viral comment read, “it’s about all of us pretending confidence while breaking inside.”.
Behind the Camera — the Real Production Story.
Shooting Pleasure was a balancing act between authenticity and ethics. Thyberg worked with additional intimacy coordinators, adult industry creative consultants, and a predominantly female crew to create and preserve safe environments of trust throughout the production. The crew even implemented a “color code” system — green, yellow, and red — so performers could signal their comfort levels during emotional scenes.
The director conducted her research over six years while living temporarily in Los Angeles to “shadow performers and industry workers.” “I wanted to understand not just the work, but the sisterhood,” she noted. “People think of competition, but there’s also care.” This duality — tenderness hidden in the tough exterior — is what defines the film’s mood.
The Conversation That Outlived the Film
Even years after its release, Pleasure is still part of conversations around representation, feminism, and the ethics of filmmaking. There are still discussions among fans over whether Bella’s transformation is liberating or corrosive. Film students study it where realism meets metaphor. And Sofia Kappel, who took a prolonged break after filming, recently returned to the limelight, taking on roles that are more about emotional truth than spectacle.