Yet at the same time as acknowledging the potential for exploitation, Pleasure also offers alternative perspectives, showing us areas of the industry in which performers are treated with kindness and consideration. Thyberg originally approach the film with a strong anti-porn perspective, but after immersing herself in the world of LA porn and meeting a range of performers and filmmakers, her view evolved into something more ambivalent. In Boogie Nights, Anderson cast porn actors in small cameos, but Thyberg takes this approach much further, casting performers in many roles across the film and working collaboratively with those in the industry to shape the film.

This approach has in itself proved controversial, with some of the performers and professionals involved in the production expressing reservations about their portrayals and Thyberg attracting criticism for not working with an intimacy coordinator. Nevertheless, this grey area is in itself consistent with a film that deliberately generates a sense of unease in its audience, leaving the question of whether Anna is empowered or exploited by her work unanswered.

Ultimately, the best films about pornography, the likes of Boogie Nights and Pleasure, reveal something audiences should already be aware of. Filmmaking, whether pornographic or mainstream, is an industrialised art form and as such is plagued by the same power imbalances as any industry in a capitalist society. Beneath the gloss, the glamour, the sleaze and the sex, these films remind us that the people who work in these industries are human, as complex and contradictory as any of us, regardless of the work that they do. By humanising porn performers and crew, these films put forward a compassionate case for taking this industry, and the rights of its workers, as seriously as we take any other. What could be truer, righter or more dramatic than that?

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