Pillion Review: Alexander Skarsgard and Harry Melling’s Sweet, Little BDSM Rom-Com

So it’s kind of a funny story about Ray and Colin. They had the type of meet-cute which is only supposed to occur in Richard Curtis movies. In an English pub on Christmas Eve, Colin (an eternally fresh-faced Harry Melling) is singing Vaudeville-tinged carols in front of locals, plus his parents, brother, and assorted family and friends. Then walks in Ray, this ridiculously good-looking biker chap in all leather and played by once and future Viking god Alexander Skarsgård. It’s postcard perfect.

Yet the thing about Harry Lighton’s first feature is that Pillion is not chasing romance of the postcard variety nor certainly a Richard Curtis flick. This becomes explicit when Ray invites Colin behind an alley on Christmas night so he unzip those oh, so tight leather trousers. And up to this point, he hasn’t even mentioned his name is Raymond. Whatever you call him though, it’s a guy not looking for a friend. He is looking for a sub in the literal BDSM definition of the term, and in Colin he finds someone he succinctly describes as having “a high capacity for obedience.”

This is how Pillion starts, and from those unusual beginnings springs the most unconventional love story of the year. It is also the most surprisingly human and heartfelt we have so far seen, in spite of Raymond’s best efforts.

Beyond first dates, Pillion tracks a tragicomic year in the life of Colin and Ray’s relationship, a dynamic shaded as much by the interpersonal dominations as the physical. The first time Colin is invited to Ray’s house, the guest is offered a tour to see where everything is and then told “you can get started dinner. You’re making pasta.” Dialogue between the two remains rare afterward, however. Skarsgård’s performance is often so circumspect that you not only must read between the lines, but are encouraged to generally forget they’re there.

The situation invites a question of how much more Ray might be willing to give, should Colin ever dare to ask. But the young and hopelessly earnest counterpart is so keen to have a lover—and somewhere to go that doesn’t involve living at home as a twentysomething with his parents—that he never sets any boundaries beyond where Ray places them. As a consequence, Colin finds himself sleeping at the literal foot of Ray’s bed, a development even Ray’s dog would not dignify as the enormous Rotweiler gets prize of place on the leather couch downstairs.

At more than a glance, the dynamic would appear exploitative and definitely unbalanced. It also becomes increasingly discomforting to people in Colin’s life, especially his parents. The pair are depicted as aggressively supportive of their son finding a boyfriend, at least at first, but grow worried after Colin begins buzzing off his hair and wearing a padlock around his neck. Conversely, the relationship between Colin’s Dad (Douglas Hodge) and his mother (Lesley Sharp) is sweet to the point of bitter, given how idealistically loving they are despite Peggy’s battle with cancer visibly entering its final stages (she wears a wig while singing Christmas tunes at the piano with Pete).

The film challenges audiences, and certainly Colin, to contrast their “normal” relationship, with his and Ray’s—whose idea of a birthday present is a surprise trip with fellow biker doms into the wilderness where they have their subs compete. And yet, therein lies the trap that Lighton sets for at least his heteronormative audiences, and from which Colin and the ever enigmatic Raymond must escape. This is a film about a deliberately unorthodox love story, but unlike so many other films that dabble in BDSM  imagery for the kink of red leather flashing by in a trailer, Pillion is sincere in its romanticism. This is an earnest character study that is at times deeply funny and at others sweet, in spite of Ray’s best efforts or the occasionally graphic nudity and ruthless mind games.

Pulling from a novel called Box Hill by Adam Mars-Jones, Lighton took a free-hand in redesigning the film. At the New York Film Festival premiere for the picture, the filmmaker acknowledged he transferred the book from its 1970s setting to today, among other notable shifts, to both modernize the push and pull between Ray and Colin—no one is in the closet here—as well as deny audiences the ability to interpret Skarsgård’s ungiving lover as a product of his time. It is, in fact, quite difficult to track what could produce a figure as withholding and guarded as Ray.

But the most impressive thing about how Skarsgård and Lighton approach the character is that he is neither sensationalized nor some erotic fantasy or nightmare. Lighton and Skarsgård certainly enjoy leaning into the natural physicality of the Scandinavian actor, who towers over Melling in scenes both awkward and charming, at one point lifting the more petite actor over his head like a prized pet. (Meanwhile their actual dogs make for one of the best visual gags since on the characters’ first date, Ray brings his Rottweiler, and Colin a yapping lap dog.) The Swede’s photogenic affability is at least one reason to believe Colin stays long after he’s outgrown what Raymond is able to give him.

However, this character is neither an exact mystery nor a cipher. He offers an unusual path through love for a younger and inexperienced partner, but the movie does not judge either party for being on this road. It just becomes an open question of how far down that street Colin can go until it might lose its carm. In this sense, there is just as much to be said in Melling’s own frequently searching and melancholic eyes. While Colin almost never ceases yapping, he is loudest when desperately basking in Ray’s scraps of light, clinging to his leather figure on the back of a motorcycle or watching jealously as his companion talks to a friend’s own subordinate.

The film’s nonjudgemental and often playful tone crafts, scene by scene, an intimate portrait that marvels in the ironies and complexities of these characters’ slowly evolving and renegotiated connection. But the film only seems to come down decisively when it circles the wagons against any character who might entertain wagging a finger about social expectations—even if that finger belongs to someone as well-meaning and sympathetic as Colin’s dying mother. Even then Sharp is heartbreaking.

This can never be a swooning or idealized romantic comedy; Melling’s eyes are too characteristically sad and preemptively defeated for that. But it can prove a surprisingly healthy one, even for the guy asleep on the floor.

Pillion premiered at the New York Film Festival on Oct. 4 and opens in the UK on Nov. 28 and in the U.S. in February 2026.