PILLION directed by Harry Lighton (UK, 2025)
This movie is promoted as a comedy but I can’t say I saw much to laugh about. It’s not a heavy, soul-searching drama but, at the same time, it pulls no punches in the representation of adult sexual themes.
As a straight, white cis guy (he/him!) my knowledge of BDSM is confined to what I read about or see on screen. Typically, therefore, I have been conditioned to regard bondage, discipline and sado-masochism as the stuff of fantasy and/or perversion. In contrast, dominance and submission have a lighter, more playful character and the basis for innuendoes about pegging or women on top. Certainly, the majority of allusions to these practices in movies are commonly associated with cruelty and/or criminality.
For this reason, what goes on in Pillion is genuinely eye-opening and educational. It doesn’t leave much to the imagination and is far from being a conventional love story. It’s certainly not a romcom nor is it what co-star Alexander Skarsgård has casually referred to as a ‘Dom-Com’.
Skarsgård plays a hunky biker named Ray who recruits the timid Colin (Harry Melling) as what can only be described as his personal sex slave. Colin’s duties also include shopping, cooking and cleaning. From a purely sexual perspective, it’s not hard to understand what he gets from playing the submissive role (needless to say, he’s never on top). Colin consents to be used. I am tempted to say that he is also abused although it has to be said that he is never publically humiliated nor physically harmed.
Colin’s mother (Lesley Sharp) accepts the fact that her son is gay but objects to how Ray speaks to him (she doesn’t know what else goes on between them). Her judgement is that he is “a cunt” and she is not wholly wrong in this assessment. Ray doesn’t set out to be likeable and remains something of an enigma throughout. He rides an expensive motorbike, wears bespoke leather gear and lives in a comfortable (though sparsely furnished) home but we never learn how he supports his lifestyle.
For viewers (myself included) who have lived a more sheltered life, the gay biker community Ray is part of introduced me to a subculture I had no prior knowledge of. The participation of actual members of the UK’s Gay Bikers Motorcycle Club (GBMCC) is an endorsement of this aspect of the story. Crucially, the film does not set out to be either judgemental or voyeuristic. It is not a political film but in its content alone it subverts the safer, more homely portrayals of gay men’s lives. A review by Hongwei Bao, a queer Chinese writer, translator and academic, notes that Pillion is not aimed to appeal to the tastes of middle-class families but that “Its radical quality [….] lies in how the film explores a radical and overlooked community history, while reimagining a bold queer political vision of alternative forms of family and kinship, created together with members of the queer community”.
I can’t honestly say that I enjoyed this movie but can appreciate how it avoids falling into the trap of being exploitative or merely titilating. I would say that it is sexual rather than sexy and, though some reviewers have called it a feel-good movie, I wouldn’t describe it in these terms but it is certainly illuminating and instructive.
