‘Truly Naked’ review: Forthright and unflinching sex industry drama set in a British seaside town

Dir/scr: Muriel d’Ansembourg. Netherlands/Belgium/France. 2026. 102mins

Sex holds no secrets for teenager Alec (Caolán O’Gorman), the central character in Muriel d’Ansembourg’s robustly explicit feature debut which follows an introverted British teen as he prepares to step into his family’s homespun pornography business. Truly Naked is forthright and unflunching in its depiction of the sex industry. At time, it makes for uncomfortable viewing. But while it is certainly not coy, the film handles Alec’s emotional journey with sensitivity and care.

 Diligently researched and non-judgmental

The film continues the themes of teenage exuality and experimentation that d’Ansembourg has explored in her short films, including the Bafta-nominated and multi-award-winning Good Night (2012). It doesn’t offer many new insights into the adult entertainment industry, but it is diligently researched (porn actress Alessa Savage, who appears in a supporting role in the film, also served as an advisor) and non-judgmental. It’s a warmer, kinder film than Ninja Thyberg’s Pleasure; a less exploitative and sensational picture than Lukas Moodysson’s A Hole In My Heart. It should be a talking point and title of interest for festival programmers and adventurous distributors following its Berlin Perspectives debut; sales to German-speaking territories and Korea have already been secured.

Alec is used to pornography being the family business.His parents met on the set of an adult movie; following the death of his mother, Alec’s porn producer and performer dad, Dylan (Andrew Howard), raised him in an ad hoc family of adult actors. And now Alec is showing real promise as a porn photographer and camera operator. It’s not an average domestic setup for a reserved sixth former and, new to an unspecified small UK seaside town, Alec is keen to keep his extra-curricular activities under wraps. Then he meets fellow student Nina (Safiya Benaddi). And Alec realises that he needs to unlearn everything he thought he knew about sex and take a crash course in intimacy instead.

D’Ansembourg gets a lot of mileage from her playful juxtaposition of the X-rated antics of burly, bullet-headed Dylan and his actresses with the banal details of domesticity. The picture opens with a sequence in which gold-painted porn goddess Lizzie (Savage) and Dylan have vigorous and extremely vocal intercourse, while Alec politely suggests new angles and positions. With the money shot achieved, the atmosphere switches. “Right, cup of tea?” says Dylan, as they chat companionably about yeast infections.

This contrast is also evident in the design and the cinematography: the porn world is lit in brash neons hues and dressed in synthetic nylon and PVC; Alec and his dad’s two-bedroom flat/porn production studio is rather careworn and unloved, with stained walls, apologetic furniture and muted lighting. And Alec himself is a character of contradictions. He may spend his evenings photoshopping his dad’s naked paunch and uploading videos with titles like ’Niagara Falls Pussy Squirt’, but in the morning he frets about being late for school and making a good impression. O’Gorman gives a lovely, natural performance, and the scenes between Alec and his unconventional but unconditionally supportive dad are genuinely heartwarming.

Alec meets Nina, the motorbike-riding, Goth-adjacent cool girl, when they are partnered up for a joint media project. The subject? Internet porn addiction, one of several instances in which the screenplay is a little too contrived and on the nose. The school project provides an entry point for discussions between the pair about sex and the female experience of adult entertainment. Nina challenges a point of view that Alec had inherited from his father. This, together with a couple of less-than-comfortable shoots in which Alec has to intervene on behalf of the female performers, starts to reframe his perspective.

Having first-hand experience of the production of pornography, the film suggests, ultimately makes Alec more sensitive to the female experience than his male teenage contemporaries, who are just mindless consumers of the material. A candid conversation between adult entertainment professional Lizzie and feminist Nina approaches the topic of female exploitation in the industry with nuance. The problem, Lizzie argues, is not with porn, but with the patriarchy. Which is fine but this conclusion – together with Nina’s integral role in Alec’s personal growth – does rather imply that the onus is on women, yet again, to sort out the mess men have made of things.