The following article contains spoilers for Pillion.
It’s been a kinky few years—at least in pop culture, and at least on paper. Emerald Fennel’s Saltburn. Halina Reijn’s Babygirl. Sabrina Carpenter’s flush-faced album cover for Man’s Best Friend. And now, Harry Lighton’s debut feature film Pillion, a BDSM awakening for the ages in which born-to-be sub Colin (Harry Melling) meets towering Adonis dom Ray (Alexander Skarsgård) and embarks on a year-long relationship slash arrangement. Except, aside from some communal biker sex in the woods and a raunchy scene involving wrestling outfits, Pillion is essentially a very classic and quite moving romantic comedy. Imagine 500 Days of Summer, but with Prince Albert piercings and one of them sleeping on the rug like a dog. (Out now in the UK and Ireland, it’s released in the US in February.)
For those expecting a nuanced or transgressive exploration of the dom-sub experience, the “rom-com in disguise” element may come as a disappointment (read: the writer Emma Garland’s razor-sharp take on her Substack, here). For me, though—more of a yearner than anything else; not totally turned off by a new twist on an old formula—it came as a welcome surprise. The emotional space between Colin (who looks so much like a “Colin”) and Ray (who looks so little like a “Ray”) is one of distance and navigation, of tenderness and devotion, and as a viewer you find yourself willing them to figure it out—whatever it is. Could Colin accept a little less, could Ray push himself a bit more? The answer is no, as it often is and probably should be, but I found myself beguiled by this well-worn dance anyway.
While Melling has drawn widespread praise for his depiction of the self-effacing Colin (I only discovered today that this is Dudley Dursley from Harry Potter; oh, how things have changed), it was Skarsgård whom I couldn’t keep my eyes off (and not just because he resembles a Florentine statue). There’s a freakiness and a playfulness that Ray emits in minute doses, making you feel thirstier than you would had there been none at all. If you’ve ever found yourself fancying someone so much that even the mere whisper of a smile feels like clouds parting, you’ll recognize the feeling replicated onscreen here. I personally don’t think Ray could have been played by anyone else. There’s a sort of inscrutable eccentricity that Skarsgård does so well, a generosity of spirit behind those ice-chip eyes.
Much has been said in recent years about the death of rom-coms, or the return of rom-coms, with “definitive” takes that appear to see-saw between the two. I am of the belief that we will never again experience the cozy, re-watchable rom-coms of the ’90s and ’00s because we live in a completely different era. Aside from the obvious (the endless parade of sequels and reboots; a budget-stretched industry afraid to take risks), we’re just not as culturally primed for those cheesy, monied, “boy meets girl” stories. They’ll always have their place (the runaway success of The Summer I Turned Pretty proves that), but they’re not the automatic go-to in the same way they once were. To that end, I think the rom-coms of today just look different. They look like Babygirl. They look like Pillion. They look like a man bent over in a plastic apron.
Like all good rom-coms (see again: 500 Days of Summer, maybe even He’s Just Not That Into You) Pillion doesn’t end in the way you want it to, but it ends in the way it should. We never find out where Ray came from, nor do we know where he’s going, but Colin emerges with a new understanding of himself. There’s every chance some viewers will find this sickly and predictable—but such is the nature of a good rom-com. And, to my mind at least, Pillion is one of this year’s very best.