The most intriguing aspect of Harry Lighton’s debut feature Pillion is that it attempts a love story, of sorts, that is specific by design yet reaching for a universal longing. In adapting Adam Mars-Jones’ 2020 novel Box Hill, Lighton has made a sometimes funny, sometimes explicit and thoroughly mysterious movie about a shy, thirty-five-year-old parking attendant on London’s outskirts who falls into an unusual union with a leather-clad biker.
While the marketing for Pillion has focused heavily on the “subculture of a subculture” specificity of the movie’s gay dominance and submission subject matter, at its center is an effectively inquisitive performance by star Harry Melling, opposite a (quite literally) commanding Alexander Skarsgård performing a bold gambit of controlled authority. Together, they construct an onscreen dynamic that shifts from unnerving to compelling, strange to tender.
Lighton opens his picture at Christmastime where lonely Colin (Melling), a barbershop quartet singer in the local pub recedes into a corner, but during a blind date his interest is piqued on the arrival of the movie star handsome Ray (Skarsgård); they’re an unusual pair onscreen physically and in a two-shot have a charged, asymmetrical visual geometry. Ray is a man of very few words, but after arranging a follow-up encounter—in an alleyway he forces Colin to not only blow him but also lick his boots—the dye for their roles is cast.
For his part, Colin has little romantic experience, despite the enthusiastic encouragement of his parents, smartly played by Leslie Sharp (indelible in Mike Leigh’s Naked) and Douglas Hodge. Mom Peggy (Sharp) is terminally ill but perpetually positive, wanting nothing more than to see her son settle down with a nice guy. Ray may not be exactly what she (or Colin, for that matter) expected.
Colin doesn’t know himself at all, and what he discovers through his near live-in situation with Ray is that he has “an aptitude for devotion,” which translates into Ray’s every wish being his command. But it goes further—in addition to following a laundry list of daily chores Ray sets out each morning, Colin cooks every meal and—get this—is forced to sleep on the floor at the foot of Ray’s bed.
But is all of this enough for Colin? Is he fully committed to the notion of being a submissive? Is this his latent, authentic identity? Or is inexperienced Colin simply going along to keep Ray on the hook? How much of the relationship is truly consensual, or reflective of what Colin himself is seeking? While Ray is clearly having his needs met—Colin becomes a slave, essentially, granted almost no affection, genuine emotion, insight into Ray’s history, or any traditional tenderness—what about Colin? In this respect, Pillion may bewilder those unwilling to accept the dynamics of a relationship in which a power imbalance leaves Colin effectively without agency, a politically incorrect notion in 2025, at least for many seeking identification.
And this is part of what makes Pillion a uniquely original article. Melling is terrific, every insecurity, longing and melancholy as we begin to understand that even while embracing Ray’s rigid scheme Colin privately wishes for more. In one of the film’s sharpest scenes, Ray submits to a dinner with Colin’s parents that quickly sours; Lighton underscores how, to an outsider, the relationship defies conventional understanding. And yet Pillion is, by its own rules, a love story. Consider Colin’s sincere proclamation:
Roses are red, violets are blue. Each day at your heel, brings me closer to you. Your hand on the throttle, your leathers so tight. I crave your command, from morning to night. Your grip is a promise, your gaze a hot flame. Next to you I am nothing, but I’m yours all the same. The pleasure you give, the pain that you bring. I’ll take it all, Ray, for you are my king.
Both actors lay themselves bare here, particularly during a woodland picnic and skinny-dipping idyll that gives way to a public display of the bikers’ dom-sub dynamics, partners traded in full view. Nothing is left to suggestion, and one wonders whether Pillion truly required such sexual pageantry; the sequence feels slightly discomfiting. It certainly has never been seen before and pushes boundaries and limits; perhaps that is the absolute point.
A sense of real melancholy informs the film’s final stretches, a testament to Lighton and Melling and their ability to engender our empathy for sweet Colin, who’d just like a little bit more: “I am happy. But I think I could be happier,” he tells Ray. How he’d like to be happy just might be a deal-breaker in this offbeat, incisive story of personal discovery.
Pillion is well-acted, stylish (Oliver Coates’ score is particularly arresting), original and effectively strange, and specialized audiences will admire its daring.
3 stars
