THE STORY – A directionless man is swept off his feet when an enigmatic, impossibly handsome biker takes him on as his submissive.
THE CAST – Alexander Skarsgård, Harry Melling, Douglas Hodge, Lesley Sharp, Jake Shears & Anthony Welsh
THE TEAM – Harry Lighton (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 106 Minutes
BDSM has always gotten a bad rep from the masses. It’s easy to write off people into the darker side of sex as either misguided, slutty, broken, or, worst of all, perverts. Unless you’re in the community, it can be difficult to understand the satisfaction that can be derived from the pleasure/pain dynamic and how strangely empowering it can be to fully submit to someone in a sexual context. Because this world exists so far outside the norms of polite society, the only exposure most people have to it comes from porn and mainstream derivatives like “Fifty Shades of Grey,” both of which are so far removed from the actuality of true BDSM relationships that they can give people the wrong impression, reinforcing harmful stereotypes that push the community and its members further underground and making it more difficult for newcomers to get into the scene safely.
Enter Harry Lighton’s “Pillion,” the gay biker BDSM drama that made a splash with its casting announcement pairing Alexander Skarsgård (“The Northman”) and Harry Melling (“The Ballad of Buster Scruggs”) as a biker Dom and his inexperienced young submissive, respectively. Yes, the buzzy casting and promise of skin will certainly draw more eyeballs to the project, as will its acceptance in Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival, where it just premiered to a thunderous standing ovation. But does the film have more on its mind than being an exercise in titillation? Fortunately, the answer to that question is yes. Unfortunately, it’s also no. First-time feature writer/director Lighton writes his two central characters with depth and feeling but doesn’t flesh out the community around them enough for the film to stick the landing.
We are first introduced to meek parking garage attendant Colin (Melling) singing as part of a barbershop quartet in a pub around Christmastime. With the requisite straw hat and candy cane-striped suit, he couldn’t look more uncomfortable if he tried. Even though he’s meeting a cute guy that his mother set him up with, he’s distracted by a group of gay bikers who have taken over the corner near the pub’s dart board, particularly Ray (Skarsgård), a tall blonde with intense eyes who pointedly ignored Colin when he was passing the hat for tips during the musical performance. But Ray slips him a napkin with his number along with a time and place to meet, which Colin does even though he doesn’t know what he’s getting himself into. After that initial hookup, Colin slowly gets integrated into Ray’s life before long entering into a Dominant/submissive relationship with Ray. That’s as far as Ray intends for the relationship to go, but Colin craves a more conventional relationship as well and is willing to push Ray to get it.
Skarsgård and Melling don’t seem like an intuitive match at first. Melling, with those saucer-like eyes and wide-open face, couldn’t be more of an opposite to Skarsgård’s lanky, pinched angularity. They’re perfect representations of Innocence and Experience, with Skarsgård’s quiet confidence easily allowing him to exert power over the bumbling, uncertain Colin. However, the film doesn’t allow Colin any space to question what exactly this dynamic is and what he should expect from it; instead, it thrusts Colin into the deep end without much of a net. After that first awkward hookup, their next date involves Colin spending the night at Ray’s as his live-in servant, being ignored and forced to eat standing up before being told to sleep on the rug, then waking up to a list of tasks, including feeding Ray’s dog, making breakfast, and cleaning. Only then do the two put on singlets and wrestle into some hot and heavy sex. Before you know it, Ray has ordered Colin a wardrobe of biker gear and a heavy chain collar to wear around his neck, and shaved his head to fit in more with the biker look. Colin seems to accept all this without a second thought passively, and, to be fair, who wouldn’t if the man doing it to them was so unbelievably good-looking that their own dad has to (hilariously) call it out? But while Colin does become a part of Ray’s group of biker friends (and their submissives), including joining them on a kinky camping trip, the film is so tightly focused on his relationship with Ray that the rest of the group feels like background noise, bit players that contribute some color but don’t have an impact on the overall narrative.
The problem is that people with that level of experience with BDSM relationships would not leave Colin to flounder on his own as he scrambles to make himself fit in that world, as seemingly happens here. Colin and Ray only really discuss their dynamic twice, once when Colin somewhat foolishly asks Ray to meet his parents for dinner (to get his mom off his back) and once after a personal devastation for Colin causes Ray to openly care for his boy in a new way, emboldening Colin to ask for more. While Lighton shouldn’t write his characters in a way that goes against the story he’s trying to tell (and is somewhat bound by the Adam Mars-Jones novel he’s adapting), he does have something of a responsibility to the community he’s portraying to do so in an honest, responsible way. In shunting the larger community, Colin becomes a part of the side, and he fails at that, even if the central relationship is, thankfully, treated without sensationalism or prudishness.
However, veracity aside, “Pillion” is an incredibly entertaining watch. Lighton lubricates the film with unexpected comic relief, particularly from scene-stealers Lesley Sharp and Douglas Hodge as Colin’s parents, allowing audiences to glide along on the film’s plentiful surface pleasures. The film moves like a dream, with super-smooth editing courtesy of Gareth C. Scales and a sleek look that emphasizes the hard/soft, Dom/sub dynamics of the story. Costume designer Grace Snell makes all the right choices of gear for the bikers, capturing the community with (incredibly sexy) accuracy. Melling and Skarsgård have strong chemistry and amplify the screenplay’s humor with crackerjack comic timing. The moment after the two share their first kiss features some of the best acting work of the year, all subtle changes in facial expressions that say more than words ever could about the massive shift in their relationship that just took place.
After that moment, the film takes a sharp turn into more mainstream territory, with a final act intent on teaching a lesson that should have been addressed much earlier in the film. Personal growth comes in many different forms, but the final moments of “Pillion” leave the question of how much growth has actually taken place an open question – Colin has the experience that he didn’t have before, but has that experience changed him? The ending leaves it open to the viewer to decide if that answer is yes or no, but in BDSM, you can’t leave anything open to interpretation. Still, complaining about that with a film as entertaining as “Pillion” feels churlish. Anyone coming for steamy sex will certainly get that, but they’ll also get a richly entertaining reminder that to paraphrase Ray, just because something makes you uncomfortable doesn’t mean that it’s bad. The happiness Colin experiences during his time with Ray is clear as a bell, and who could deny him that? “Pillion” may not be perfect, but treating these characters and their dynamic with the respect that it does is a damn good start.
