Film Reviews & Movie Analysis

pillion (noun): a seat for a passenger behind a motorcyclist.

Harry Lighton’s striking debut Pillion pushes our expectations of the British rom-com firmly into the present. It has everything we love and expect from the genre — desert-dry humour, hide-behind-your-fingers awkwardness, and that very real ache of wanting to be loved. It’s relatable even though the world the story uses as a device might not seem it.

You know this one: a shy gay man (Harry Melling) becomes a submissive to a hot biker (Alexander Skarsgård). No? On the surface Pillion sounds pretty niche as we enter a world where power dynamics plays an overt central role in a relationship. When Colin (Melling) is invited to Ray’s (Skarsgård) home he is expected to cook and clean, and at the end of a hard day in the kitchen Colin finds himself sleeping on the floor at the foot of Ray’s bed. This isn’t about humiliation – it’s the rules of a submissive-dominant (sub-dom) relationship where hierarchy and its acceptance is the linchpin to its success.

As we watch Colin change over the course of his relationship with Ray — including donning his own leathers — the landscape of a sub-dom relationship opens the film up to an exploration of power, masculinity, community and acceptance. Pillion brilliantly captures something universal about the dynamic of “the awkward one and the hot one” that transcends the heteronormative versions we usually see in mainstream cinema.

The performances enrich this film: Alexander Skarsgård does what he does best as a Stoic and impassive wall of attraction — the kind of ‘perfect’ figure society has conditioned us to do almost anything to keep once obtained. But within that seemingly flat persona, he offers tiny chinks of vulnerability that leave you wanting more. We see him as Colin does, and those flashes of humanity and personality amidst the unknowingness of Ray hit hard.

Harry Melling may have finally shirked his Harry Potter cloak with this role. There’s a tenderness and tentativeness to his performance that grounds the film completely. Colin’s character journey in many ways goes from submissive to dominant outside his relationship. As a parking ticket officer Colin has the worst job putting up with all manner of abuse from the public (it’s funny to watch but also makes us feel ashamed that we’d treat people doing their job so horribly).

At the start he stands there and takes the abuse, internalising it and letting it make him feel small, but later he fights back, and the insults roll off him. We also watch him stand up to his parents about his lifestyle and make choices instead of having choices made for him.

Pillion brings its audience into an unexplored world through a naïve but open character, and the result is funny, sad, and a genuinely impressive debut feature. With its Christmas wrap-around, I’ll let you decide whether it earns a spot on your annual holiday rewatch list.

Although Pillion fits many of the rom-com beats it can be a bittersweet as it pulls at the knots of modern relationships and reminds us that it’s okay to define the way you want to be loved.

Check out what else I watched during BFI London Film Festival 2025