Pillion Allows The Audience To Take Both Pleasure and Pain In Its Queer BDSM Relationship

9/12 ForReel Score | 4/5 Stars

Harry Lighton’s BDSM centric romantic dramedy Pillion didn’t come into focus for me until about halfway through. I was struggling to feel invested in the central romance between rough and tumble biker dom Colin (Alexander Skarsgård) and his more timid and inexperienced sub Ray (Harry Melling). After meeting in a pub they quickly strike up sexual chemistry but as Colin takes Ray to his secluded home, the domination feels like more than just play. Immediately upon arrival Ray demands Colin cook his dinner and sleep on the floor. Only the next day after Colin is faced with more chores does he get to have sex. It felt as though Lighton was trying to convince me that all of this was unambiguous fun and I just wasn’t buying in. I wanted better for Ray.  I’m queer and have never viewed myself as a prude, so my uncomfortability was also laced with guilt. “Am I simply not immersed in this community enough to withhold judgement?” It is a guilt that becomes more complex when attached to the fascistic times we’re living in. I can already feel myself involuntarily shrinking. I hated that Pillion was making me feel smaller. 

Then, Colin and Ray have a long awaited dinner with Ray’s family. Ray’s sick mother Peggy (Lesley Sharp) has expressed her doubts about Ray from the get go and has only gotten more vocal. Her doubts mirrored my own. She didn’t like that Ray made Colin shave his hair or that he forced him to cook them dinner on his own birthday. No part of the attraction registers to her. When she finally gets the chance to spend time with Ray face to face and he makes a cutting comment about Colin’s cooking, Peggy finally loses her temper. In response to the critique that she “doesn’t like how he talks to her son,” Colin replies that “it is not for you to like.” It is a simple statement that appalls Peggy but made me pause. My judgment of this relationship may have valid points but ultimately, Ray is not being held captive. He returns to Colin’s home day after day for months. If anything, Colin is avoidant, later on almost ending the relationship entirely because Ray brings up a single thing that isn’t making him happy. He is in his own way just as vulnerable in this, just with a different way of expressing it. 

The way this relationship ultimately unfolds incites a deep appreciation for how sharp Lighton’s writing and direction is. He’s not concerned with coddling audiences who are coming in with an entry level understanding of these kinds of dynamics. There’s neither expectation nor fear of judgement and he gives his two terrific leads complete freedom to bring both the sexuality and the awkwardness of this dynamic to life. Harry Melling has been largely unimpressive in a string of supporting roles in middling streaming fare but he opens up so much here. For some reason, he has been typecast as slimy and intimidating despite being the utter opposite. Pillion allows him to dig into his inherent naivete. We feel the moments where he’s liberated and when he’s in over his head. Skarsgård’s role is a bit more stoic by design and yet he commands both the screen and Ray. There’s a chilling conviction to his domming. He’s so rarely willing to break the facade but in the little moments where he lets go, we see the underlying care that he tries so hard to suppress. 

There is a temptation when depicting queer people to make them either angelic in pursuit of normalization or completely tormented in pursuit of empathy. So rarely do we get a story like Pillion that is entirely comfortable dwelling in the ambiguity that stems from living a marginalized lifestyle. It puts the impetus on the viewer to either judge or take part in their pleasure. Despite that, Lighton does ultimately arrive at a satisfying and thought provoking thesis about this relationship that ties the story together beautifully. At the start, I pitied Ray. Now, I just hope he’s happy.