Film
Pleasure
Other titles called Pleasure: the 2021 film.
- Workplace drama
- Strange
A 15-minute Swedish comedy-drama set behind the scenes of an adult film production. It's workplace intrigue played straight—office politics, professional tension, and ego collisions, except the office happens to be a porn set. Funny and oddly touching, it treats its characters as real people with genuine stakes, not punchlines.
Should you watch it?
Watch it if you enjoy deadpan workplace comedies where the petty politics of a crew matter more than the job itself, and you like a sharp satire that finds the awkward humanity in an unusual setting.
Skip it if you are uneasy with sexually explicit material, since the film treats its subject frankly and rarely looks away from the set's bodies and business.
What it asks of you: Over almost before it settles at fifteen minutes, so there is no time to warm up; keep your attention on the small, dry exchanges, which carry the jokes.
Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.
If you liked this
Spa Night2016
A young man navigates family pressure, shame, and desire at a Korean bathhouse. Like Pleasure, it finds humanity and dark comedy in spaces built around the body, treating its subject with unflinching respect and tenderness.
But Slow, intimate, and deliberately unglamorous. Some will find it too quiet or too uncomfortable to sit with.
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days2007
Romanian masterpiece about two women navigating an illegal abortion. It has Pleasure's documentary-like eye for behaviour in high-pressure situations, and the same refusal to look away from difficult realities or judge its characters.
But Deliberately paced, morally complex, and genuinely bleak. This is not entertainment in the conventional sense.
Godless2017
A Western where the town is run by women, and power dynamics are everything. It has Pleasure's interest in how people perform for cameras and authority, and the same dark humour about who gets to decide the rules.
But Tonal whiplash between comedy and violence. Some storylines collapse under their own weight.
Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Pleasure
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Show Me Love1998
Both are Swedish films about desire and performance that refuse to be cynical about their characters' bodies or choices.
Lukas Moodysson's Swedish debut about two teenage girls falling in love in a small town. Like Pleasure, it's funny and warm while dealing with shame, desire, and the gap between who you are and who you're expected to be. The connection is Moodysson's unironic tenderness toward his characters' bodies and choices—he never punches down.
But If you come to it expecting teen romance, the specificity of its 1990s Swedish setting might feel provincial or slow.
More like this (8)
Chungking Express1994
Wong Kar-wai's neon-lit romance about connection and longing. Like Pleasure, it finds profound emotion in small, everyday moments between people, and it's willing to be strange and funny without losing sincerity.
But Deliberately oblique storytelling. If you want a straightforward narrative, this will frustrate you.
The Souvenir2019
A film student in 1980s London falls for an older, controlling man. Both films examine performance, power, and how we misread the people we desire. Sharp, darkly comic, and quietly devastating.
But Deliberately mannered style. Some viewers will find the artifice pretentious rather than illuminating.
Shame2011
Michael Fassbender as a Manhattan man wrestling with sexual compulsion and isolation. Like Pleasure, it refuses to moralize while exploring intimacy, shame, and the gap between public and private selves.
But Graphic sexual content. More importantly, it's bleak and offers no catharsis or redemption.
Tangerine2015
Shot on an iPhone, following two trans sex workers in Los Angeles over 24 hours. It has Pleasure's guerrilla energy, dark comedy, and insistence on seeing marginalised people as fully human and funny and worthy.
But Deliberately rough aesthetic. The dialogue is naturalistic to the point of being hard to parse for some viewers.
The Girlfriend Experience2009
Siu Lim Wong plays a Chelsea escort in Manhattan. Steven Soderbergh's locked-down, observational style mirrors Pleasure's documentary approach—clinical, non-judgmental, focused on the work and the person doing it.
But Glacially paced. Deliberately uneventful. If you want plot momentum, this withholds it.
Ken Park2003
Larry Clark's unflinching portrait of American teenagers. Raw, confrontational, and genuinely interested in how young people navigate bodies, desire, and morality without flinching from contradiction or discomfort.
But Extremely graphic sexual content involving minors. Genuinely difficult to watch, and many will find it exploitative rather than illuminating.
Stories We Tell2012
Both examine how cameras change behaviour and how people perform versions of themselves, but Haneke makes it a meditation on family, memory, and truth itself.
Michael Haneke's documentary-drama about his own family's mythology and sexual secrets. It has Pleasure's interest in what we perform for the camera, and how the medium itself shapes reality. Genuinely moving about how families construct narratives.
But Defiantly austere. Haneke's style is glacial and withholding; this asks patience and surrender rather than engagement.
The Wrestler2008
Both treat people who monetise their bodies with genuine dignity, finding pathos and dark humour in the gap between the performance and the person.
Darren Aronofsky's portrait of Mickey Rourke as an aging wrestler performing his body for money. Like Pleasure's characters, he's doing a job—a performance, a routine—that requires him to hurt himself. The film loves him anyway, and finds grace in the work and the worker.
But Brutally depressing. There's no redemption arc, only the slow recognition that some damage can't be undone.
People
Cast
Jenny HuttonMarie
- Ingrid Meling EnoksenThe Stylist
- Jonas KarlströmThe Director
- Jenny KihlströmJessie
- Håkan CarlssonThe DoP
- Ted ErikssonPorn Actor 1
- Samuel BrissmanPorn Actor 2