Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Harry Lighton
Starring: Harry Melling, Alexander Skarsgård, Douglas Hodge, Lesley Sharp, Jake Shears, Paul Tallis, Anthony Welsh
It's 50 shades of gay in Pillion, first time writer/director Harry Lighton's adaptation of a BDSM romance novel by Adam Mars-Jones. This is a film that doesn't play the kink for cheap and cheeky laughs, though it does find much humour in its scenario. You might say it's laughing with BDSM rather than at it. It's a movie about pain that is delivered with a gentle touch, taking masochism out of its usual cinematic setting of underground clubs and dungeons and into the cosiness of middle class English suburbia. Here, S&M meets M&S.
Harry Melling plays Colin, a shy and inexperienced young gay man. Refreshingly, his inexperience comes not from being closeted. He's fully out and has the full backing of his parents - dad Pete (Douglas Hodge) and mum Peggy (Lesley Sharp), the latter of whom is in the final stages of terminal Cancer and deeply wants her son to find happiness before she succumbs.
Colin finds happiness in the unconventional form of a relationship with Ray (Alexander Skarsgård), the Adonis-like alpha male leader of a gay biker gang. Their "meet cute" sees the taciturn Ray bully Colin into paying for his crisps at the pub where Colin performs with his dad as part of a barbershop quartet. Ray slips Colin a note, ordering him to meet in a car park the following evening, despite it being Christmas Day. The subsequent encounter isn't exactly the stuff of Mills & Boon, with Ray silently coaxing the nervous Colin into some oral action before riding off into the night.
After weeks of being ghosted, Colin is contacted by Ray, who invites him to his home. There it becomes clear just what sort of relationship Ray is after. He forces Colin to cook his meals, makes him sleep on the floor and orders him to pay for his groceries. The smitten Colin would like a little more, but a cuddle is very much out of the question, so he embraces and takes pride in his clearly defined role in this sub-dom dynamic.
Much of the humour comes from Colin's awkwardness as he negotiates this alien subculture, and from the over-the-top awfulness of Ray's treatment of him. Melling displays a gift for comedy, channelling the nervous energy of a young Nicholas Lyndhurst in the early seasons of Only Fools and Horses, while Skarsgård delivers Ray's cruellest jibes like a Medieval prince driving a sword through a jester who no longer makes him laugh.
But this is also a deeply sad story of people who can't be open with each other about their true feelings. Her understandable disapproval of Ray's treatment of her son drives a wedge between Colin and his mother at the very time when they should be at their closest. Ray's treatment of Colin becomes heartbreaking when it's suggested that Ray is developing a genuine affection he refuses to give into. Watching Colin's inability to stand up for himself is amusing at first, but it eventually becomes uncomfortable. After decades of movies about how society won't allow gay men to be themselves, Pillion suggests that in these relatively enlightened times some gay men are their own worst enemies in this regard.
Pillion is in UK/ROI cinemas from November 28th.
