Pillion

It has all the trappings of a great British romantic-comedy. A Christmas meet-cute. An awkward first meeting with the family. A dash of Hollywood glamour. But Pillion is, in all its tender, bum-baring glory, so much more: a nuanced and affirming exploration of intimacy within a subculture that so rarely sees this kind of big-screen treatment.

Adapting Adam Mars-Jones’ novel Box Hill, Harry Lighton, bringing boundless first-feature energy to his adaptation, carefully shades in all the corners of Colin (Harry Melling). Starting with what is quickly understood to be an eventful night in his small-town life — a performance at his local as part of his dad’s barber-shop quartet, and a blind date with a local man with whom he has little in common. On the other side of the pub, Ray sticks out like a sore thumb (if the thumb were 6 '4”)‚ with the eyes of a husky and the build of a time-travelling Viking.

As Ray, Alexander Skarsgård wears his motorcycle leathers like a second skin, moving with the ease and conviction of a Golden-Age cowboy. Twenty-four nerve-racking hours later, a bewitched Colin is down an alleyway, for a shambolic act of fellatio that hails the start of a clumsy yet captivating BDSM relationship.

Pillion celebrates how alive a transformative experience can make you feel.

Melling — who graduated from playing the thuggish Dudley Dursley in the Harry Potter films to a stand-out character actor for the likes of the Coen brothers — evokes vulnerability to heart-melting effect, without ever making his character overly sympathetic. We see Colin unfurl, albeit within the confines of a lifestyle that requires him to sleep on the floor, fetch beers on command, and spend his birthday bent over a picnic table in nothing but a plastic apron. We also become entrenched in Ray’s community, an ensemble of BDSM bikers who are captured through a naturalist lens sharing joy and camaraderie.

As his journey of self-discovery revs along, Colin notices chinks in the expectations of him. His relationship with Ray is made of rich fabric, sensitively arranged by Lighton. A major thread belongs to Colin’s terminally ill mother Peggy (played disarmingly by Lesley Sharp), whose refreshing encouragement for her son’s love life stops short at a generational, heteronormative divide. There are also welcome moments of lightness: a breakdown in comms over a box of Roses chocolates cracks the early tension between the pair, and showcases Skarsgård’s ability to change a scene’s tempo with just a flicker of emotion.

There’s no neat bow to tie up Colin’s predicament. Like all first loves, his is messy and leaves a deep imprint on the fresh memory foam of his new life. But through all its highs and lows, Pillion celebrates how alive a transformative experience like this can make you feel. As all great filmmaking should.