Just when you think you’ve seen every possible romcom permutation, along comes one set in a gay dom/sub fetish biker gang. This previously untapped milieu provides the fuel for writer-director Harry Lighton’s utterly fantastic debut Pillion. Hilarious, weird, and genuinely affecting and romantic, it’s a bolt from the blue, an explicit tale of sex and fulfilment in the sleepy outskirts of London that gets career-best performances from both its leads while consistently feeling like nothing you’ve ever quite seen before.
These leads are Harry Melling and Alexander Skarsgard as, respectively, the meek Colin (who gets verbally abused while he hands out parking tickets for a living and still lives in his old bedroom at his mum and dad’s place) and the diabolically handsome and commanding Ray, the de facto leader of a local gay biker group. Not exactly a romantic or sexual go-getter, Colin is instantly hypnotised by Ray when he shows him just a little attention at a pub on Christmas Eve and he’s swiftly entangled in a psychologically thorny relationship, playing the submissive to Ray’s dominant. It’s not just the sex – Colin also cleans Ray’s flat, cooks his dinners, and sleeps on the floor (all while wearing a padlock around his neck to signify who he belongs to).
There’s a much less interesting version of Pillion, which Lighton has adapted from Adam Mars-Jones’s novel Box Hill, which plays exclusively as a dark psychological drama, of which this setup has all the ingredients. But Lighton, while never downplaying the oddness and possible harm of the dynamic, also keeps things funny and romantic from start to finish. Both Melling and Skarsgard earn big laughs, as do Lesley Sharp and Douglas Hodge as Colin’s bemused parents, dad Pete endlessly supportive of his son while terminally ill mum Peggy is much spikier and more suspicious.
Both leads are brilliant here, Melling especially great whenever Colin figures out and tests the boundaries of Ray’s rules, while Skarsgard shows a whole new side to himself as a performer. Utterly aloof and charismatic in public, he’s able to communicate (and get big laughs) without words and, sometimes, without even facial expressions, very funny with his body language once his biker leathers and helmet go on. Yet, in private, Skarsgard also expresses Ray’s deep-rooted fear of his own feelings with exceptionally precise skill and, again, sparse, often monosyllabic dialogue. It’s the kind of acting that awards season will never recognise but, come Oscar time, I can’t imagine many of the nominees will have put in better work than this.
Stylistically very simple, Pillion knows exactly where its strengths lie, and Lighton never puts a foot wrong, from his electrically funny and authentic writing to the frank and complex sex scenes that leave very little to the imagination (if I had to guess, this is probably the first A24-released film with multiple close-up shots of a cock piercing). Its world may be alien and bizarre to most, but Lighton, Melling, and Skarsgard ensure that it is completely compelling in the best romcom of 2025.
Jack Blackwell – Film Reviews 