The Menu

 The Menu is an elegant and sophisticated pastiche of mad slasher and torture porn horror films.  It's meaning and significance is obscure to me.  But the film effectively delivers the suspense and gruesome thrills that characterize the genre.  This is something like a cross between Saw or The Hostel (the sinister laboratory of torture) and Halloween, complete with a "final girl", the plucky heroine who ultimately outwits the insane sadist who has murdered everyone else around her.  It's an exploitation movie for "foodies", starring the famous actor (and Shakespearian thespian) Ralph Fiennes as the mad chef who organizes the orgy of slaughter in his ultra upscale restaurant.  It's trash, indeed, trash of a salacious variety, and the plot never really makes any sense at all -- but this is a lurid horror film and, viewed in that light, pretty successful.  

A "foodie" named Tyler and his date, Margot, travel by ferry to an island on which The Hawthorne, an elite, ultra-fashionable and expensive restaurant is located. About 15 other diners are gathered in a sleek, black chrome and ebony room where they are served by an army of waiters.  In an stainless steel kitchen open to view by the patrons, a dozen or so cooks are working like automatons to prepare the five course menu fixe meal.  The cooks labor with their noses close to the dishes that they are preparing, all sorts of ingredients reduced to emulsions or atomized foam with wild flowers tweezered into place as garnish.  The cooks are clad in spotless apparel and act as if they are the members of some kind of cult -- they speak in unison.  Presiding over this eerie kitchen and dining room is the head chef, the famous Julian Slowik, played with campy aplomb (he's a bit Ernest Thesiger in The Bride of Frankenstein) by Ralph Fiennes.  As becomes almost immediately apparent, Slowik is insane and intends to murder all of his arrogant and super-wealthy customers.  Of course, he intends to torture and kill everyone during the course of the baroque five course meal that he is serving to his guests.  Slowik isn't really equipped with any motive for the mayhem that he intends -- he seems to be simply psychotic, although like most movie madmen extremely voluble and well-spoken.  Somehow, Slowik has succumbed to ennui with respect to the restaurant business and, instead of gracefully retiring, intends to murder all those who have enabled his success. The movie traffics in a sort of anarchist "eat the rich" sensibility -- the slaughter of the elites gathered for this prestigious last meal is really just an exercise in wish-fulfillment and envy for the audience; these people have all sorts of money and can afford pleasures denied to the rest of us and, therefore, must be tortured to death.  There's really nothing more intricate about this film and this is its raison d'etre.  

Over the course of the meal, the guests have fingers severed, are mocked by the insane chef, and Slowik's "angel" investor is fitted out with wings and, then, slowly lowered into the sea to be drowned as a spectacle for the diners.  One of Slowik's cult-members, a boy chef commits suicide in the presence of the dinner party.  Slowik, for no good reason, decides to punish himself by forcing one of his girl chefs to stab him in the groin with a kitchen scissors; apparently, he has sexually harassed this woman and apologizes to her by urging her to impale him on the sharp blades.  The men are all rousted from their seats and force to run around the island while the cooks pursue them like wild game -- this is a completely pointless sequence and adds nothing to the movie but confusion -- it's padding to make an 80 minute shocker last for two hours. Tyler's date, Margot played by the delicious Anya Taylor-Joy, figures out that these games can have but one fatal outcome.  She finds a radio and calls for help.  The Coast Guard arrives but the rescuer turns out to be an actor on Slowik's payroll and this episode is merely a sadistic ploy to create hope in the doomed diners before dashing those hopes to pieces.  Margot figures out Slowik's weak point and, cunningly, exploits it -- Slowik is really just appalled by the pretentious "molecular" and deconstructed cuisine that he is serving to the fools gathered in his restaurant; she offers him an alternative, more down-to-earth course and buys some time so that she can escape.  (By this point, her annoying date, Tyler, has hanged himself out of despair at being rejected by his idol, the celebrity chef Julian Slowik.)  Everyone else ends up murdered in a spectacular conflagration.  Out at sea, Margot, whom we learn was really an escort hired by the unfortunate Tyler to attend this "last supper", smokes a cigarette and contemplates the horror! the horror!  

The movie isn't offensive and has a very funny script.  The diners slated for torture and murder all deserve their fates -- they are a group of vicious rogues and well-heeled plutocrats:  a serial adulterer, some high-tech bros with blood all over their hands and questionable tax returns for a good measure, a vicious food critic from an important magazine, a sleazy failed movie star, and a woman who drinks continuously throughout the movie and is introduced to us as Slowik's mother.  When the food critic complains that the emulsion in one of deconstructed dishes (it's bread but without the bread -- just some chemical smears for flavoring the bread that isn't served), Slowik keeps sending her larger and larger bowls of this yellow-orange emulsion until she has a bird-bath sized basin of the stuff on her table.  In general, the vicious, selfish wealthy people gathered for the meal deserve what they get and so the murders are all in good fun.  It's impossible to figure out why Slowik is determined to kill everyone, including himself, and his wait-staff and sous-chefs -- it's some sort of pique over the poor taste and questionable morality of the customers frequenting his cafe and his own status as a celebrity chef for such people.  But, certainly, the revenge is far disproportionate to the cause for the revenge.  

The movie is full of good actors with juicy roles.  There's lots of inside foodie lore on display.  The picture is very handsomely produced with elaborate sets and an enveloping sense of doom and calamity as the movie progresses -- there's no escape from the remote island.  Some of the grotesque scenes and events remind me of James Ensor's macabre culinary paintings -- his "La Cuisiniers Dangereaux -- the Dangerous Chefs" of 1891 in which a plump waiter serves Ensor's head on a platter, the 1896 painting of two skeletons fighting over a pickled herring, or "Comical Repast -- the Banquet of the Starved" with a some hapless bourgeoisie are about to tuck into a meal of insects and decomposing scraps of bone.  The director Mark Mylod is a notable cable TV director -- he has helmed episodes of Game of Thrones, 
Shameless, and 16 episodes of Succession.  Mylod directs lucidly but, as with Succession, all of the witty repartee and the clever casting, adds up to nothing.  It's as tasty and empty as one of Chef Slowik's disassembled ingredients, an atomized froth that is without any real substance.  You know something bad is going to occur and the doom of the restaurant patrons is worked out in lavish detail but you don't know why any of this happening.  It's like the extravagant slanging scenes in Succession where everyone denounces everyone else in the most witty and obscene ways possible; it's posited that everything is at stake due to some complicated financial maneuvering, thus the on-screen hysteria, but you don't know why.  

Pleasure

 Pleasure is a Swedish film produced in the United States in 2021 and directed by Ninja Thyberg. (It appears to have had its American premiere in Austin at the South by Southwest festival in 2023).  The movie blurs the distinction between hard-core pornography and a scripted realistic feature-film drama -- the film is 105 minutes long.  It's interesting on the basis of its sordid subject matter, a documentary-style exploration of the porno industry.  Like many films on this subject, the movie exploits its subject, featuring lots of lush sex scenes shot for erotic titillation while at the same time venturing a critique of the exploitational aspects of the hard-core porn industry.  There's nothing in this movie that isn't, more or less, self-evident:  it  should come as no surprise to most viewers to learn that the performers who make movies of this kind are entangled in a nasty business rife with opportunities for coercion and abuse and, further, that most of the people involved in this kind of work lack much in the way of a  moral compass -- when the porn-actresses aren't being assaulted or cajoled into accepting abuse, they are scheming to betray one another.  It's an open question, I suppose, as to how much the sex workers in the pornography industry differ from actors in show business in general.  In some ways, the plot of the movie is a variant on films like A Star is Born, featuring an ambitious performer who will do anything to further her success in the business -- in broad terms, the narrative could be transposed into mainstream films or, even, a corporate setting without doing much violence to the premise.  What gives Pleasure its buzz, however, is the graphic sex scenes, the blunt and graphic negotiations involving bondage and simulated rape and acrobatic exercises required to implement certain outre intercourse scenes.  The picture is well-made, with carefully composed shots, some long takes in which the women talk about the industry, and opulent sets -- poolside parties, Vegas mansions, and various porn studios.  The central character Linnea (aka Belle Cherry) is a cipher -- she's undeveloped and, with the exception of a long, crepuscular scene in which she talks by phone in a misleading way to her mother, we don't know much about her.  She seems preposterously ambitious and weirdly stupid -- part of the film's premise is that Belle Cherry is a neophyte in the industry:  we learn about the ins and outs of the porn business through her inexperienced eyes.  The film purports to be "sex positive" but, in fact, its a formulaic morality tale -- Belle Cherry succeeds in the industry but at the cost of betraying others, moral compromise, and, in the end, she has become the very thing that is problematic about business:  in the penultimate sex scene, we see, that she has become hardened into a sexual predator herself.  So despite the film's glib nonchalance about graphic sex, the film espouses a highly conventional morality -- Linnea/Belle's immersion in the sewer of the sex industry ends of befouling her both physically and morally:  at the end of the movie, she has chlamydia (or a bad yeast infection); she's, more or less, diseased and has become a a bad person, a "sinner," although the film would shy away from this word, it is, nonetheless, apt  It seems that you can't make a film on this subject without slipping into moral condemnation, indeed, something like "slut-shaming."  This was the case with the much better Boogie Nights and, certainly, seems to be the case with Pleasure.

We first see Linnea shaving her pubic area in preparation for her first performance in a sex scene.  At first, the business seems weirdly genteel.  There is a lot of discussion about consent and limits.  Linnea as Belle Cherry gives her consent on film, holding a valid photo-ID and a current newspaper to verify the date.  The sex scene works out fine:  she's paid $900 and Belle starts looking for other work in the business -- does she have a "Green Card"?  Details of this sort that interest me are ignored.  It quickly becomes apparent that Belle's success in the industry will be dependent upon her signing with a well-connected agent.  A man named Mark Spiegler is reputedly the best agent in the biz and Belle connives to persuade him to work for her.  (Her first few gigs are under the aegis of a Black agent who encourages her to seek out jobs involving rough and abusive sex, bondage, and other fetish subject matter).  Belle encourages who roommates to explore work in the industry.  Her best friend, Joy, is interested but gets into a fight with some male "talent" at a pool party -- she pushes the man into the pool and he angrily calls her names.  Belle does a bondage shoot with a woman director who is extremely careful about protecting the actress from harm -- she is given elaborate instructions as to safe words and how to demonstrate her boundaries even when encumbered with a ball gag in her mouth.  This shoot is also well within Belle's range and she seeks out harder material.  For some reason, she agrees to a rape scene involving two men.  Things slide out of control and, in fact, Belle is actually raped and roughed-up. This scene is disturbing because Belle repeatedly calls for a time-out, the camera is shut-off, and, then, "talent" importunes and sweet-talks her into more abuse -- saying that she's strong and self-confident and will be able to endure the torment that they inflict upon her; Belle is a "good sport" and, so, against her own better instincts, continues with the abusive rape scene.  Afterwards,  she complains to her agent, the Black porn actor, but he turns on her, saying that she contracted for the gig without his knowledge and got what she deserved.  Belle fires her agent, sets up a meeting with Mark Spiegler who seems uninterested in her -- she needs to show him a resume with more rough stuff on it.  Belle, then, embarks on an exercise program of rectal dilatation, using butt-plugs of increasing size, so that she can successfully perform the "holy grail" of interracial anal sex -- that is, "double anal."  After much preparation, she performs this feat to everyone's amazement and surprise -- double anal has never been attempted before, let alone, successfully.  This prodigious act gets her better gigs.  She signs up for a humiliation and abuse scene and encourages her roommate, Joy, to work with her.  But the male actor contracted for the scene has backed-out and Belle with Joy find themselves working with the vicious guy that Joy pushed into the pool a few weeks earlier.  This guy takes the opportunity to aggressively abuse and humiliate Joy.  When Joy later complains, Belle refuses to back her up, disloyally claiming that Joy is hysterical and that there was nothing out of the ordinary about the scene.  (In fact, Belle was well-aware that the male performer was using the gig to abuse Joy.)  Belle and Joy are no longer friends.  Throughout the film, Belle has admired an elegant and successful porn star named Ava.  In fact, she aspires to Ava's success.  Belle is now well-established in the business and gets a chance to work with Ava.  During the shoot, Ava refuses to perform oral sex on Belle saying that she's "all creamy down there" and smells bad to boot, apparently due to a yeast infection.  This causes a change in plans for the sex scene.  Belle gets fitted out with a black dildo strap-on and has sex with Ava.  Something snaps in Belle and she violently rapes Ava, slapping her face and spitting on her.  After the scene, Belle and Ava are riding back to a party in a limousine. Ava is nonchalant and seems none the worse for wear.   Belle says that she wants to get out of the car.   The driver pulls over and Belle gets out.  On this ambiguous note, the film ends.

The movie seems authentic in its portrait of the sex industry.  Many of the performers are actually sex-workers in the trade.  (The loathsome Mark Spiegler, the proprietor of Spiegler Girls, plays himself and there are actors in the movie with names like "Chris Cock", "Cezar", and so on.  Spiegler, a disreputable Jewish guy, is spectacularly unattractive and wears tee-shirts with weird slogans such as "I Hope your Cell-Phone falls down the Toilet.")  The movie is implausible at its heart for several reasons:  first, the leading lady has a completely flat chest -- she would not succeed in the porn industry without breast enhancement but no one suggest this to her.  I suppose its unchivalrous to make this observation but the star is naked on-screen for half the picture -- she has an angelic face and a nice derriere, but her tiny breasts would disqualify her for success in the porn industry at least on the level that she desires.  You can't ignore this sort of stupid casting mistake.  Second, much of the movie's middle act involves Belle's preparations for the "double anal".  The problem is that there is no such thing as a "double anal" -- try to figure out the logistics of such a thing, particularly with the very well-endowed African-American "talent" involved in this picture.  Of course, with some huffing and puffing, double penetration can be achieved -- this is sex with penetration simultaneously in the vagina and rectum.  In fact, what the film seems to show is merely double penetration, arduous in itself, but a staple of group sex scenes in modern porn movies.  (I kept wishing the camera would give us a "money shot" vantage on the "double anal" so that I could see how this act is performed -- but the movie, which starts out with aggressive close-ups of genitalia and penetration becomes increasingly discrete as it proceeds.)  The third problem is that by the time that Belle gets raped, she is already sophisticated  in the business and, certainly, knows that precautions must be taken to avoid this sort of abuse.  Furthermore, she seems weirdly unaware that, the moment her consent is withdrawn, the sex scene will turn into criminal assault -- a rape that could be prosecuted against the male actors and their enablers.  In the sex industry, all sorts of safeguards exist to protect performers from assault or, more crucially, from being thrown in jail for rape.  The Swedish female director, Ninja Thyberg, is adapting a 2013 short subject that she earlier made with the same name.  But the feature-length movie has a curiously archaic view of the sex industry -- it seems to be taking place in a pre-"Me-too" era.  After the charges levied against Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein, the sort of things shown in the movie would not occur -- and the abusive "rough" sex scenes would have to be very carefully choreographed and supervised.  We now live in a world in which Shakespeare productions routinely hire "Intimacy Coordinators" and I see no reason why a multi-billion dollar porno industry would not be similarly attuned to avoiding litigation and protecting its human assets.  In a "red carpet" interview with the woman playing Ava in Pleasure, she noted that the movie is very true to life with one exception:  Belle performs the "double anal" scene for free (presumably just too show such a thing can be accomplished).  The actress in the interview at the film's premiere said that, of course, no one ever works for free in the porn industry.