Review: Pillion (2025)

Pillion

Rating

Director

Harry Lighton

Screenplay

Harry Lighton

Length

1h 47m

Starring

Alexander Skarsgård, Henry Melling, Lesley Sharp, Douglas Hodge, Anthony Welsh, Jake Shears

MPAA Rating

Unrated

Review

Cinema history has not always been friendly to alternative lifestyles. However, with recent successes in theaters for films looking into the depths of dominance and submission, a film like Pillion feels like a natural evolution of the genre.

Colin (Harry Melling) is an introvert, a barbershop quartet singer whose love affairs are a bit lifeless. When he meets a tall, brickhouse of a man (Alexander Skarsgård), his submissive side steps forward into a relationship he isn’t quite sure how to express himself in. Skarsgård’s Ray expects certain things from his partner including sleeping on the floor, domestic duties, and standing at attention while he eats the meal cooked for him. For some, including Colin’s mother Peggy (Lesley Sharp), the relationship feels degrading and manipulative. Whether Ray has any love for Colin remains unknown for much of the film but for Colin, the love is enduring.

Melling’s performance as the shy parking attendant is sweetly gentle, one that many self-conscious men can find something to identify with. Skarsgård’s strict detachment is refreshing even if it isn’t too far removed from his True Blood character, the brooding vampire in that series’ central love triangle. Still, that stoicism gives Ray something emotionally resonant to go with his physicality and stature. It’s when things get messy between them that the vulnerability and self-doubt begin to present themselves, threatening their intentionally imbalanced relationship.

One of the issues with films like 50 Shades of Grey is how it seems to add a pretty veneer to its sexual chemistry. Films that have arisen in its wake take that same sort of sheen and gloss over some of the more honest and realistic depictions they could have attained. Pillion understands that and not only populates frames of the film with fellow D/s enthusiasts but presents several situations that might seem too risqué even for those who find 50 Shades exceedingly naughty.

Director Harry Lighton adapts Adam Mars-Jones’s Box Hill into a slow-moving but pensive exploration of gay fantasy versus gay reality. Skarsgård is like the cover model who men would want to be dominated by. Melling is the nerdy boy who harbors such fantasies but never gets the glow-up the women in productions like 50 Shades often receive. He remains the same self-effacing, unconventional submissive who learns what he wants and gains self-confidence as a result. It even uses Colin’s parents to explore the societal confusion over the relationship standards within that community. In that way, it is like those 50 Shades clones but with a more realistic edge that promotes honest conversations.

Pillion is not a movie for everyone. While it could promote discussions outside the queer and BDSM communities, it’s still a topic that modern audiences aren’t quite willing to tackle with any measure of genuine honesty. That’s why the fantasies like 50 Shades are so popular. It’s never about hard truths but a sense of empowerment that such movies give and that’s perfectly acceptable. However, Pillion is the kind of movie that gets down into the warts-and-all elements and that’s not where a lot of people want to be but it will certainly be there when they are.