★★★½ (3½ out of 4)
For those who stay away from R-rated movies with explicit erotica, preferring a night at home with classic cinema on TCM, “Pillion” is probably not the movie for you. But you never know. What goes on between dominant leather biker Ray, played by Alexander Sarsgård, and timid, lonely boy submissive Colin, acted by Harry Melling, are impurely consensual acts between adults. That means Ray likes Colin to follow orders unless things get too much. Sounds like a lot of marriages to me, minus the kinky parts and the easy out. Colin cooks, cleans, shops, and also licks Ray’s boots on a Christmas Eve first date.
In this queer BDSM romdomcom with a core of sweetness, Alexander Sarsgård and Harry Melling bring passion and compassion to a taboo subject rare in mainstream cinema. It’s about time.
Kink aside, “Pillion” is a queer romdomcom with a core of sweetness beneath its shockwaves of nudity and, you know, clamps, whips, nipple rings, fetish leather and name your BDSM poison. To demystify the acronym —BDSM means bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism—“Pillion” is a damn good movie about understanding behavior that normies tend to reject out of hand. In updating the 1970s-set novel “Box Hill” by Adam Mars-Jones, first-time director Harry Lighton shines with actors, offbeat humor, sneaky heartbreak and the silly-serious ways love can break barriers when two spirits are willing.
The title, by the way, refers to the small seat behind the driver of a bike or motorcycle, or the passenger who uses it. That makes Colin the pillion. And Melling, best known as Dudley Dursley from the “Harry Potter” kiddie film franchise, smartly and movingly traces Colin’s growth into his own man, submissive or not. He sings in a barbershop quartet when he’s not parking cars for cash or trying to explain Ray to his parents who don’t like their boy shaving his head like a biker and following Ray around like a dog with a collar.
Sarsgård plays Ray like he needs to be played, without any display of emotion that could be seen as a weakness. But within the limited range of his character, Sarsgård works wicked wonders. The scene in which Ray meets Colin’s parents, Pete and Peggy, played to perfection by Douglas Hodge and Lesley Sharp, is comedy heaven with a few side trips into Colin’s personal hell. Sharp is superb as the mother with cancer reducing her chances to set her boy right. She brings piercing emotion to telling this blond Adonis that beauty is no excuse for cruelty as she defines it. No dom alive is a match for a protective mother.
To his credit, director Lighton never demonizes or cheers this dom-sub relationship. He lets empathy seep into Colin’s need to have a day off from Ray’s sexual and domestic demands. But he allows both men to define their limits. What’s the line between coercive control and abuse? What we think has no bearing on the path taken by Ray and Colin. What cannot be disputed is the skill shown by director Lighton and actors Alexander Sarsgård and Harry Melling at bringing passion and compassion to a taboo subject rarely given space or time in mainstream cinema. It’s about time.