Pillion

Mild-mannered traffic warden Colin (Harry Melling) finds a new lease on life when he runs into emotionally distant but sexually gifted biker Ray (Alexander Skarsgård). The dom-sub relationship that follows consumes Colin as he strives to break through Ray's shell, leading to hilarious and tragic results.

Raunchy tale of kink is tenderly told and perfectly timed for Christmas. Picture a cozy pub in some scant corner of Bromley as dreamy-eyed traffic warden Colin (Harry Melling) joins his harmlessly neutral parents and friends to sing carols in a barbershop quartet. Eyeing him with an icy gaze is leather-clad biker hunk Ray (Alexander Skarsgård). While Ray is the walking embodiment of a lonely rider, a man with no name, Colin is subservient by nature, even though he's an out and out gay man, the kind whose diabetically sweet parents are always eager to set him up with one bloke or the other. In Colin, Ray sees the perfect pillion rider. And when a kinky deal of oral pleasure behind a shoddy Primark over a bag of crisps, Colin is willing for Ray to take charge and ride him all around. After all, Colin is a momma's and daddy's boy who doesn't even have a license, no matter how many parking tickets he sticks to vehicles for his day job. And so, a twisted but rather Christmassy bond revs into force.

A subversive directorial debut that cements itself among the best (and most timely) rom-coms of our time. Much like what Colin craves from the emotionally stoic Ray, first-time director Harry Lighton deserves an affectionate pat or two for hitting it out of the park with such an assured feature debut. In adapting a 1970s-set queer love parable like Adam Mars-Jones's 2020 novel Box Hill, Lighton crafts a quirky, funny, tragicomic rom-com (or should we say dom-com) that is perfectly suited for an era of romantic dissuasion. Casual hookups and an overabundance of dating apps (particularly Grindr in this case) might have made us less prude, but the fear of commitment still lingers, especially to extremes if you're an ominous beefcake like Ray. Establishing himself as the rule-maker in their dom-sub arrangement, Ray instructs Colin to cook and clean his apartment and deprives him of any cuddles by instructing him to sleep on the floor. Even his couch is out of bounds, with Ray finding his pet Rottweiler to be a better partner to eat his late-night pasta with. Naturally, even kissing on the lips is out of bounds. You can't help but sympathize with Colin, who is fighting his family to justify his willingness to become Ray's pet puppy, shaving off his head and chaining a lock around his neck. And yet this is not your average BDSM film on power play. Owing to Melling and Skarsgård's surprisingly natural comic timing and some intimately intense eye combat between the two, Pillion rises above its cliches as an ultimately tender rom-com, one that acknowledges the weaknesses (and in turn their humanity) of its physically, morally, spiritually, and sexually opposite lovers. When it comes to sexy Christmas movies, Pillion opens in cinemas around the perfect time.

An uncomfortable but necessary dive into the fine line between BDSM and abuse. Even with the explicit dom-sub binary at play, Pillion thankfully doesn't dabble in some moralistic brandishing of the BDSM subculture. On the contrary, it normalises a lot, partly with Lighton casting many actual members of the Gay Biker Motorcycle Club playing themselves. The result is no surreal arthouse exercise in provocation but something which just feels raw (no pun intended). The film unabashedly boasts kinky wrestling, alfresco orgies, and even a jaw-dropping glimpse of a septum-ised 'prosthetic' organ, but Pillion shines when it's also willing to tap into the awkward chuckles and grunts in between all that grappling and thrusting. Then, there's also the much-needed scope for questioning the extent to which one can stretch a BDSM relationship to the point of abuse. While Ray's fellow gay bikers are adept in the art of after-care, our nihilist biker is the kind who uses his partner as a ragdoll. By still providing Colin enough agency to rethink his choices, Pillion is also unafraid to tap into the morally grey areas of consent and its perversion. While a third-act pivot might divide some sentimental viewers, the rider and his pillion passenger take us on a sexy joyride that is as drool-worthy as it is thought-provoking.