Movie Review: In submission romance ‘Pillion,’ BDSM meets barbershop quartet
“Do you give?”
It can be a pertinent question in any relationship, but it’s a particularly poignant one for the BDSM couple of Harry Lighton’s kink-friendly, disarmingly affecting romance “Pillion.”
Like most lovers, Colin (Harry Melling) and Ray (Alexander Skarsgård) have an understanding. OK, sure. Their lines are a little more firmly drawn than most. Colin does all the cooking, sleeps on the floor and wears a locked chair around his neck. (Ray keeps the key around his.) You could say the power balance isn’t quite equitable.
Basically, Colin does whatever Ray wants him to, and is happy doing it. There is, as you might expect, not a small amount of leather involved. Judge if you must, but the arrangement seems to work for them.
Even among the many odd couples to grace our movie screens, Ray and Colin are a singular duo. Fay Wray and King Kong had more in common. Colin is a meek and accommodating parking enforcement officer in Bromley who lives with his parents (Lesley Sharp, Douglas Hodge) and sings in a barbershop quartet. Ray is a mysterious, terse and deadly handsome motorcyclist.
If you’re wondering how they could have ever come together — most people who encounter them do — “Pillion” begins with a very memorable meet-cute — memorable because their coming together is almost the exact inverse of romantic-comedy fantasy.
Colin is on the way to a barbershop performance when, from the backseat of a moving car, his eye catches a blur going past. Betty Curtis’ “Chariot” swoons on the radio. Later in the pub, they don’t actually meet or even lock eyes, but Ray leaves a note to meet up, on Christmas. The date, if you can call it that, is brief. Ray says hardly a word, but Colin follows him into a dark alley. Licking of boots, and more, ensues.
“What am I going to do with you?” says Ray afterward.
“Whatever you want, really,” replies Colin, without a trace of guile or shame.
When Colin returns home, his parents are eager for details. “Nice chap?” his dad asks.
It’s a question that hovers over “Pillion,” which very much takes Colin’s perspective as their relationship deepens — or at least becomes more codified. Ray says virtually nothing to Colin that isn’t a command. You’d say he treats him like a dog, but Ray at least lets his dog sit on the couch.
We wait for either Colin to break, or Ray’s imperial reign to soften. But it’s also clear that Colin is quite happy. Submissiveness comes naturally to him. He cheerfully quotes Ray telling him he has “an aptitude for devotion.” When he clings to Ray’s back on his motorcycle, Colin looks downright blissful. When Ray makes him wrestle, he quickly dominates Colin. Does he give? Happily.
The power struggle, or surrender, of “Pillion” makes it perhaps our first “dom-com.” (It’s also, somewhat hysterically, the second domination-themed release from A24, following 2024’s “Babygirl.” ) But what makes “Pillion,” Lighton’s first feature, such a bewitching experience is its lightness. It’s based on Adam Mars-Jones’ “Box Hill,” but Lighton’s film largely avoids the darker, abusive turns of the novel. Lighton is more keen to enjoy the unfolding dynamics of a relationship in the extreme, one that ultimately, like any other, is guided by needs and wants.
And the performances are uncanny. Skarsgård’s Ray is swaggeringly impervious, with only the most subtle hints of sensitivity. But the movie belongs to Melling. The former “Harry Potter” actor has always had an uniquely beguiling presence. I think of him most in the Coen brothers’ “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” shorn of all appendages yet still so powerfully arresting with those melancholic eyes. In “Pillion,” it’s the way that Melling so goofily and sweetly takes to his new role with Colin that makes the film both quite comic and curiously moving.
It’s a funny movie; there are countless moments, like that “Nice chap?” line, primed for laughter. But it’s also, especially for a film that’s drawn headlines for its explicitness, a strangely touching one. “Pillion” has been billed, a little tongue-in-cheek, as a love story, timed to Valentine’s Day. But it’s more like a sexual coming of age, one where even a submissive like Colin that you can’t always give.
“Pillion,” an A24 release in theaters Friday and nationwide Feb. 20, is not yet rated by the Motion Picture Association but contains explicit sex scene. Running time: 106 minutes. Three stars out of four.