Tender as the gentle brush of a flogger down the backside, writer-director Harry Lighton’s Pillion is the sweetest, hottest master-servant romance we’re been served in decades—since Maggie Gyllenhaal crawled on all fours for James Spader in Secretary, at least. Starring the singular Harry Melling (best known for playing that little shit Dudley in the Harry Potter movies) as a lost soul who finds himself by begging for scraps from the foot of Alexander Skarsgård’s bed (and yeah, relatable), Lighton has with his feature-film debut gifted us with one of the most unexpected love stories of our age. A willing submission of self as satisfying as a single well-earned “Good boy.” We really are just dogs in the end.
An adaptation of Adam Mars-Jones’s 2019 novel Box Hill, we first meet Colin (Melling) in full candy-stripe regalia singing with his Barbershop Quartet at the local pub. Also featuring his father Pete (Douglas Hodge), Colin is very clearly the stand-out voice in the group, getting all the big solos. But his soulful singing aside it also, from our point of view anyway, seems like a bit of an embarrassing spectacle. With his frilly curls, tra-la-la-ing old-timey ditties to a cramped room full of bikers and drunks who’re only half paying attention, this is probably the first sign Colin might just have himself a humiliation kink. But oh ho ho it won’t be our last.
Turns out that Colin’s on an informal blind date this night that his enthusiastic mom Peggy (Lesley Sharp) has set up for him—it’s quite lovely, his parents’ unwavering embrace of Colin’s queerness, not once presented as an issue. But just because they don’t mind that he likes boys doesn’t mean they understand what Colin wants or needs from a relationship. And so while the bloke Mom’s brought along seems perfectly nice, it’s clear from his sparkly “Free Britney” t-shirt down to their total lack of chemistry that these two won’t be making any long-term plans.
Thankfully, there’s some romantic promise squirreled away in the far corner of the pub—one of those bikers that’s not paying attention to Colin’s show is a large golden god of a man named Ray (Skarsgård, giving the best performance of his career to date), who naturally catches Colin’s eye. He is, after all, played by the real-life large golden god Alexander Skarsgård.
What shocks Colin—and us, and eventually all of Colin’s friends and parents and strangers on the street—is that Ray does indeed actually see Colin back. Sauntering up and demanding Colin order him a beer (which Colin does dutifully) Ray takes the beer and passes him a Christmas card with a single command scribbled inside—a place and a time to meet the next day.
Nevermind the next day is Christmas. And so as his family opens their gifts and hums their carols and tongues their figgy puddings around him, Colin sits in a daze, watching the clock. And the second it’s time to head out he’s out the door despite his mother’s protestations, borrowing his dad’s dated and three-sizes-too-big leather jacket for good measure. They just have him bring the dog in case he needs protection.
Turns out that Ray’s brought his own dog to their meet-up too, but I’ll leave the sight-gag of those two pups for y’all to discover. What follows from there is perhaps the most aggressively gay antithesis of a meet-cute that’s ever been put on-screen—Pillion doesn’t blush in the slightest in laying bare the very particular facets of a sub-culture within a sub-culture. Which is to say the sexual forthrightness of this encounter might have some normies running for the aisles.
The film is so ho-hum toward the carnal whirlwind Colin finds himself excitedly, enthusiastically getting pulled into that it makes it all seem like the most natural thing in the world. The Earth itself would and should vibrate from the sound of humanity’s collective falling to its knees to worship the sight of Alexander Skarsgård standing in front of us in a leather jumper and rubbing his crotch—there’s nothing unnatural happening here. And this movie knows it. Merry Christmas to one and all. (Fuck Die Hard—I know what movie I’ll be jingling my bells with every holiday season from here on out.)
And the ecstatic spark that lights Melling’s face up as this sequence unfurls from under its zipper is really a wonder to behold—Colin has found his place, on his knees in a back alley, and my god it’s beautiful. So much so that Ray, seemingly in it for just the orgasm, also notices—in what’s often a monosyllabic performance Skarsgård is tremendous at showing us how much Colin’s freshly unleashed enthusiasm is constantly tickling Ray under his exterior cool. So what might’ve been a one-time thing turns into a repeat performance, and before you know it Colin’s wearing a padlock around his neck and Ray’s wearing the key. (As an aside it’s pretty funny that this is the second film after 2023’s Please Baby Please that’s found Melling finding himself thanks to a pretty boy in leather. Talk about a very specific niche to claim!)
From here out Pillion becomes a tangled tango of two-person vulnerabilities, with each of these men elbowing forward their desires and needs—Ray tugging on Colin’s leash and vice versa. Feelings get knotted up like ropes wrapped tight around exposed bottoms bent over public park picnic tables. And never not once does it feel as if the filmmakers or the actors are pulling their punches. Colin’s contradictory quest to eke selfhood from submission isn’t an easy one, and Pillion never shies away from that. (His parents’ confoundedness, where once they were so open-minded, only enriches these complications having their own complications.)
But Pillion never punishes Colin for his desires either. Well no more than he’d willingly beg for, anyway. The film and its leads are so clear-eyed toward their kinked-up subject that we giddily ride side-saddle through their thorny issues of consent, with massive smiles slapped on our faces and branded on our behinds. “Riding pillion” is the British term for being in the side-car of a motor-bike after all, while further from there it’s turned into queer British slang for being a bottom. So you could say that Pillion makes ecstatic bottoms of us all.
Pillion screens October 4th and October 5th at the New York Film Festival.