Dick-sucking, boot-licking, and ball-gagging are de rigueur for a film like Harry Lighton’s wildly graphic and unusually shifting BDSM romance, “Pillion.” However for a British queer movie that places the particulars of a homosexual dominant-submissive affair (or association, higher but) up entrance and up shut, actors Alexander Skarsgård and Harry Melling discover the candy heart of a narrative marked by clamps, cages, and assless unitards. Little question comparisons will come up to a different A24 film, “Babygirl,” which final yr put Nicole Kidman on all fours, crying out to Harris Dickinson that “I’m gonna pee!” which truly she was simply having an orgasm with one other particular person for the primary time.
Lighton and co-writer Adam Mars-Jones actually do take us there within the pleasant “Pillion,” with Skarsgård getting extra emotionally bare than ever and nearly as bodily greater than he ever acquired as Eric Northman on TV’s “True Blood.” However not with out, at first, this leather-clad biker, who seeks a submissive with seemingly disinterested vibes, radiating aloof vitality when he first meets barbershop quartet singer Colin (Harry Melling, in a very particular and great breakout efficiency). A parking storage attendant by day and dandied-up singer by evening who’s only a bit too previous to nonetheless be dwelling together with his dad and mom — although his mum (Lesley Sharp) is dying of most cancers, which partially retains him residence — Colin isn’t a lot on the lookout for love or companionship or intercourse as a lot as he lastly occurs to fall into it when he’s requested for a date of kinds on Christmas Eve by Ray (Skarsgård, who appears to be like and sounds increasingly more like his father with every day).
Ray is an enigma and a thriller, a person who zips into city on a bike like a phantom, and will simply as simply evaporate at any minute. He’s by no means giving of emotion towards Colin as their courtship — once more, if we are able to name it that — turns right into a critical however by no means sinister recreation of domination and submission. When Ray ultimately brings Colin again to his ascetically composed condo, he refuses to let Colin grasp up his coat. He refuses Colin to have a lot volition in any respect. Ray additionally has a tattoo in the midst of his chest, inked with the names “Ellen Wendy Rosie” for causes by no means defined however all of the extra so as to add to his impenetrable attract.
It’s penetrating Colin — bodily, psychically — that he ultimately will get round to after some toying and coying. He received’t let Colin sleep subsequent to him, conserving him on the ground like a canine on the foot of the mattress. Right here’s the form of man for whom Karl Ove Knausgård ‘s “My Wrestle” is gentle bedtime studying. Colin’s mom is shocked when Ray makes him purchase the groceries and prepare dinner his personal birthday dinner. “You couldn’t upset me when you tried,” Ray, ever the implacable and beautiful dominator, tells Colin at one level. What makes “Pillion” so thrustingly good is how a lot the film teases and tantalizes us, getting off on withholding, till lastly unleashing in all its graphicness as soon as Colin is face down, plunging his mouth on Ray’s fairly massive, pierced cock, plunging ever deeper into Ray’s expansive kinky social world. Scissor Sisters lead Jake Shears makes his appearing entrance as one of many submissives orbiting Ray — and he finally ends up one of many stars of a highly regarded group intercourse scene splayed out over a picnic desk, by which Ray fucks Colin nose to nose, eyes locked on eyes, for the primary time.
It warms the cockles of my coronary heart nonetheless to consider Colin, having shaved his head and completely turned himself over to acts of devotion and in service of his grasp, sporting a locked chain round his neck, with Ray sporting the important thing round his personal. “Subsequent to you, I’m nothing. Once I’m yours, I’m the identical,” Colin tells Ray, which sounds just like the debased line of somebody being desperately exploited by a associate. However Colin says it with the cadence of affection, which his mom in her dying days merely can’t perceive. Colin willingly places himself in an abject place as a result of what’s taking place between him and Ray is love, for him at the least, even when that model of affection doesn’t comfortably conform to our understanding of what love is meant to be, a system of back-and-forth movement in mutual instructions. Colin craves Ray’s command, and Ray can be mendacity if he stated he wasn’t feeling emotions about his boytoy, too.
Which is when “Pillion” takes an surprising route, Colin lastly assuming extra management over the connection and changing into the emotional energy backside he was destined to be of their dynamic. What makes “Pillion” work so nicely is that the movie lastly does give strategy to an enormous emotional launch after a lot cockteasing and edging of the viewers and of Colin. Cinematographer Nick Morris has an eye fixed for each sweaty intimacy in its hottest moments and the pooling reserves of need and reined-in emotion that require a sure detachment. Till we’re snapped again into what’s finally a deeply shifting love story, one the place we turn into the submissives to Lighton’s unusual, stunning, and attractive imaginative and prescient. It additionally by no means hurts to be anchored by two actors who’re completely recreation and dedicated to that imaginative and prescient, and keen to go there, chains, gags, assless chaps and all.
Grade: A-
“Pillion” premiered on the 2025 Cannes Movie Competition. A24 will launch the movie at a later date.
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