Dir/Wri: Harry Lighton | Cast: Alexander Skarsgard, Harry Melling,Douglas Hodge | UK Drama 2025
Reviewed by Ian Long
Shy, bashful Colin is a traffic warden by day and a singer in a barbershop quartet by night. He lives with his parents, who are so gay-friendly that they don’t just accept his homosexuality – they actively encourage it. But when his cancer-stricken mother Peggy sets him up on a date, Colin evades the dull bloke she’s chosen and instead hooks up with Ray, a handsome, edgy biker.
There’s an immediate chemistry; Colin and Ray’s emotional and sexual requirements slot together like jigsaw puzzle pieces. Which is to say that Ray quickly asserts his dominance and, just as readily, Colin yields to it. Moving into Ray’s surprisingly staid-looking Chislehurst maisonette, Colin adopts a fully submissive role, effectively becoming Ray’s slave – sexually and otherwise.
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s novel Venus in Furs is the prototype S&M story (the clue’s in the author’s name). Like Pillion, it highlights paradoxes in the power dynamics of such relationships. Ones which, arguably, figure in all intimate connections, if in less vivid and dramatic forms.
In the book, submissive Severin begs beautiful Wanda to dominate and degrade him. She refuses, holding out for a more equal partnership. But he insists and, finally, she complies. As she fulfils his self-abasing desires, however, any love or respect Wanda has for Severin steadily dwindles. She begins to relish hurting him. Eventually, she increases the levels of punishment far beyond his expectations.
This raises various questions. If a ‘dom’ can only maintain superiority with the tacit compliance of their ‘sub’, who is really in charge? Particularly if, as in Furs, it’s the sub who has forced the dom to take on a persona at odds with their fundamental character and predilections?
Pillion explores a more mutual connection, and its tone is lighter. The characterisations play up the power imbalance to a comical degree: as Colin, Harry Melling is pallid, slight, and endlessly apologetic, his very posture radiating deference and timidity. Meanwhile, Alexander Skarsgård’s leathered-up Ray seems to tower at least two feet over him. Bronzed, chiselled and aloof, he looks as if he’s walked straight out of a Tom of Finland drawing.
Though unquestionably arrogant and exploitative, Ray is an enigma. How can he be happy sleeping in a double bed while making his boyfriend spend his nights on the floor? If it’s Colin’s unadulterated devotion that spurs Ray to torment him, what does this say about the psychology beneath the buff façade? And if Ray is gay, how come three women’s names are tattooed in series on his chest?
The idea of a gay sadomasochistic rom-com is pretty bold, and it will be interesting to see if the film will fly. Pillion has some graphic moments, particularly when Colin has a day out with Ray’s crew of BDSM bikers. But the impact of this is deliberately undercut by occurring in an unlikely sunny riverside location, rather than the more probable venue – a dank sex-dungeon.
In Box Hill, the novel on which Pillion is based, Colin is 18; a credible age to be discovering one’s sexuality, and the script feels geared to a teenage protagonist, particularly when his folks are fussing over his big date. Melling, on the other hand, is 36. This casting possibly reflects a wish to avoid taints of grooming or paedophilia, but cinemagoers may wonder what on earth has prevented Colin from realising his true nature in the previous couple of decades.
Venus in Furs ends with Wanda finding a more dominant man and submitting to him. Severin, too, learns from his experience. He tells us that men and women will become ‘true companions’ only when each has equal rights in education and work, framing the domination he demanded from Wanda not so much as an erotic preference as the product of an imbalanced social order.
At heart, Pillion is also a rite-of-passage story. Colin levels out his tendency towards submission with a hopeful dash of self-preservation, and the ending illustrates what’s at stake for both men when the power balance of their relationship shifts. Many of the story’s questions go unanswered, though, and we’ll have to fill in them in ourselves. @_I_a_n_L_o_n_g_
PILLION IS IN UK CINEMAS from 28 November 2025 |