Director Harry Lighton’s new film Pillion doesn’t seem like a traditional rom-com at first glance. After catching each other’s eye at a bar and sharing a torrid encounter in an alley way on Christmas night, awkward parking attendant, Colin (Harry Melling), becomes enthralled with aloof biker, Ray (Alexander Skarsgård). The pair quickly shack-up together and Ray firmly establishes a Dom/sub dynamic between them to which Colin easily, even gleefully, submits. And yet, despite explicit sex scenes, partner-swapping and humiliation play, those elements are just the specifics of a romance that otherwise feels universal in its emotional truth.
When we first meet Colin, he feels like a passive participant in his own life. He goes straight from singing in the quartet his kindly father, Pete (Douglas Hodge) runs, to going on a date with a nice if boring guy his mother Peggy (Lesley Sharp) set him up with. He feels adrift and unsure — that is, until Ray sidles up and starts treating him like, at turns, a servant or an object. Indeed, particularly in the early part of their relationship, Ray casually if clearly establishes his dominance over Colin by doing things like tossing his jacket on the ground rather than hang it up on the empty hook when he first enters Ray’s home. In every interaction Ray subtly makes Colin’s role clear in his life, pushing his boundaries to see what he’ll accept and establishing the contours of their dynamic.
While things like making Colin sleep on the floor at the foot of the bed or having Colin compete against the subs of Ray’s biker friends to see which of them is best at catching the fruit pits spit at their mouths would be humiliating — even degrading — in the context of a traditional rom-com, here, they allow Colin to blossom. Indeed, the more Colin cedes control of his life and appearance to Ray’s desires, the more empowered and confident he feels. For his part, Melling portrays Colin’s evolution brilliantly. In the film’s early stretches, he draws laughs with his befuddled responses to Ray’s actions, standing awkwardly in the background when Ray invites his dog to sit on the couch next to him rather than Colin. Later, when Colin’s sexual and emotional fulfillment have made him more confident and willing to advocate for himself, Melling’s eyes are wide and shining as Colin looks at Ray, his body practically vibrating with excitement.
For his part, Skarsgård perfectly contrasts him. The actor uses his imposing height and muscled physique as both an expression of Ray’s desirability and superiority within the relationship. When Ray manhandles Colin during sex or uses a controlled, even voice to tell Colin what to do, the palpable command radiating from Ray makes it easy to understand not only why Colin so readily submits to him but why being controlled by Ray makes him feel protected and cared for.
Still, just as important — if not more so — for Colin is that Ray has a very clear picture of what he wants and knows how to relay that in a way Colin simply cannot fathom at the beginning. While both men spend much of the film immersed in and deliriously happy with the life they’ve made together, conventional life inevitably encroaches. When Ray and Colin share a dinner with the latter’s parents, Peggy is understandably concerned with the way Ray controls her son. However, when she tries to challenge Ray, saying she doesn’t like his behavior, Ray calmly replies, “it’s not for you to like.”
Once again, in a different rom-com context, Ray’s behavior would be a step too far. But in that moment, Lighton and co-writer Adam Mars-Jones use that moment to beg the question of whether kink-centered or, more acutely, queer relationships should have to abide by straight ideas of acceptability. A Dom/sub relationship may not be for everyone, but it makes Colin and Ray happy and fulfilled. Why can’t it be just as valid a way of life as Pete and Peggy’s loving, self-professed non-confrontational relationship? And besides, isn’t their relationship just a more extreme version of any romantic dynamic? All romantic relationships — regardless of their nature — involve boundary pushing and compromise. Ray and Colin’s relationship just plays with those tendencies in a more structured way.
Indeed, that’s what makes Pillion so surprising and satisfying. BDSM is merely the backdrop for a more universal story about two people who might just be in love and the way their relationship challenges them both. Certainly, this love story may leave more viewers clutching their pearls than the average big screen rom-com, but the core elements are quintessential to the form. Colin and Ray meet-cute, they’re swept up by their attraction to each other and they struggle to overcome fundamental differences. They just also happen to engage in a lot of public sex too.
