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How sick is it to drop an Alexander Skarsg\u00e5rd<\/a> gay BDSM movie when the girls-and-gays population has already been enfeebled by Heated Rivalry<\/a>? In Pillion, the new A24 \u201cdom-com\u201d directed by Harry Lighton, Skarsg\u00e5rd plays Ray, biker-gang leader and inscrutable top to the film\u2019s shy bottom, Colin (Harry Melling, a.k.a. Dudley Dursley in the original Harry Potter movies). The film gives us shameless permission to ogle at the six-foot-four actor in all of his chiseled glory. But for all the assless wrestling singlets and bicep-hugging leather jackets he wears, there is one Pillion accessory that will leave you deeply, irrevocably horny: his reading glasses.<\/p>\n As Ray, Skarsg\u00e5rd occasionally wears metal-rimmed oval spectacles you would traditionally associate with aughts computer programmers and other species of geek. On him, they magnify the smoldering gaze of a Nordic hunk whose good looks have been immortalized in a Taylor Swift song<\/a>. It\u2019s one thing to see Skarsg\u00e5rd speeding down a rural British highway on a motorcycle he polished by hand. But to see him curled up with the final volume of Karl Ove Knausgaard\u2019s My Struggle in these slutty little glasses? Lord have mercy!<\/p>\n \u201cSlutty little glasses\u201d \u2014 canonized last year by critic Blakely Thornton in a lusty encomium<\/a> to Jonathan Bailey\u2019s Jurassic World Rebirth spectacles \u2014 are one of the most lethal weapons in romantic warfare. Though some consider the term unique\u00a0to Bailey\u2019s type of small wire spectacles,\u00a0to me, it\u2019s not about frame style but spiritual juxtaposition. For the glasses to become truly slutty, they must be worn by a conventionally hot person who then becomes not just beautiful but refined and enigmatic. Time and time again onscreen, lovers are driven mad by sirens in eyewear that hint at some unknowable aspect of their psyche \u2014 elusive characters like Alice (Nicole Kidman) in Eyes Wide Shut, Eugene (Drew Starkey) in Queer<\/a>, and Shane (Katherine Moennig) in the L-Word. The glasses make you think, That\u2019s not the emotional terrorist who left me on read for six months; that is my Shayla.<\/p>\n In Pillion, Skarsg\u00e5rd\u2019s Ray is impenetrable by design. More an idea than a person, he conducts his relationship with Colin on strict terms. Colin wears a padlock while Ray wears its key as a necklace; he sleeps on the floor, cooks for Ray, and otherwise yields to his commands. Ray makes it abundantly clear that he has no plans to open up to Colin or share the type of intimate relationship that would allow for lazy weekend mornings of crosswords and coffee. And then, about halfway through the movie, we get a glimpse of him reading on the couch in these delicate glasses \u2014 a faint disruption of his\u00a0tough-guy fa\u00e7ade. Pillion\u2019s costume designer Grace Snell, who took the glasses from her personal stash, described them in a Wallpaper<\/a> interview as \u201can imperfection to this perfect man.\u201d They tease a tantalizing sensitivity in him, a complex inner life that Colin \u2014 and, by extension, we \u2014 will tragically never know.<\/p>\n Perhaps spurred to action by this seductive glimpse of Ray living the soft life, Colin eventually drums up the courage to ask his dom for an occasional day off from their emotionally closed-off dynamic. The result is, let\u2019s just say, a reminder that glasses do not an emotionally sensitive man make. Perhaps one big lesson to take from Pillion is this: If you see Rob Rausch at Warby Parker, run.<\/p>\n Stay in touch.<\/p>\n Get the Cut newsletter delivered daily<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n