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Although based on the 2020 novel ‘Box Hill’ by Adam Mars-Jones, Harry Lighton’s Pillion is mostly unrecognisable from its source material, retaining only a few crucial details. Gone is the 1970s Surrey setting, along with the first-person narration and reckoning with queer identity at the height of the AIDS crisis. Kept are the names – Colin and Ray – and the latter’s ties to the local BDSM biker community, but where Mars-Jones’ novel skewed heartbreaking, this loose adaptation is broadly buoyant, as the mild-mannered traffic warden Colin (Harry Melling) finds himself entangled in a dominant/submissive relationship with the near monosyllabic Ray (Alexander Skarsgård), a gorgeous unknowable alien who seems to get exactly what he wants every second of every day without having to ask for it. And as unlikely as it seems when they first meet – one performing with his barbershop quartet in a pub, the other in his biker leathers, not looking up from a stack of Christmas cards he’s filling out – Ray wants Colin.
Colin is flummoxed by the attention but immediately game, accepting a written instruction to meet outside Bromley Primark on Christmas Day, much to the concern of his well-meaning parents (who insist Colin take the family’s long-haired dachshund with him for protection). What Colin lacks in worldliness he makes up for in enthusiasm. Ray, unreadable, sees potential, and quickly installs him in his spartan flat, where their sexual relationship begins in earnest. From here Colin is inducted into a world of leather, lube and delayed gratification; he takes to it like a duck to water.
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Harry Melling has been doing consistently great work as a character actor, particularly in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and Harvest, but Pillion marks his first bona fide leading role, and the delicate balance of Colin’s character is a testament to Melling’s skill. He’s a nervous, awkward sort, with a hangdog expression and one foot constantly in his mouth, but as he grows in confidence through his relationship with Ray, Colin comes into his own, understanding himself better through exploring his sexual desires. He’s the perfect foil to Ray, a towering monument of quiet machismo with just a glint of good humour, and the chemistry between Melling and Skarsgård in their tricky tightrope double act is essential to Pillion’s effective emotional core.
While some of the weight of Mars-Jones’ novel is lost by updating its time period and giving Colin a more supportive family, the biggest misstep comes in a changed ending, opting for an ambiguous end to Colin and Ray’s story. While the general lightness injected in ripples across Pillion is to the film’s credit, the final act threatens to reduce the poignancy of the central relationship by suggesting it’s quite replicable. Perhaps the intention is to indicate that Colin’s life doesn’t end with Ray (while it may have started with him) but the conclusion undermines the well-balanced mixture of tenderness and turmoil in both Lighton’s script and the two central performances.
Nevertheless, Pillion understands the excruciating vulnerability of vocalising desire both sexual and emotional, realised on-screen with some of the most erotic and uninhibited sex scenes in recent memory (with special credit to intimacy coordinator Robbie Taylor-Hunt). The boldness, nuance and humour with which Lighton navigates BDSM dynamics as well as Colin and Ray’s personal and joint complexities results in a film that’s frequently touching and surprising, less of an adaptation and more of a reimagining that compliments the source material rather than replicates it.
