In PILLION, we learn a great deal about gay biker culture in the UK. This is to be expected in a film wherein a sweet man (Harry Melling) discovers a side of himself he never suspected after falling under the commanding spell of one of those ci-mentioned bikers (Alexander Skarsgård). What is unexpected is discovering that a kiss in not just a kiss, and in the context of this highly charged sexually explicit love story, that is a revelation with the impact of a tsunami. The kind that flattens coastal cities.
Our sweet man is Colin, who spends his days giving out traffic tickets and his evenings, at least during Christmas, singing with a barbershop quartet at his local pub in Kent, UK. One evening, as he is passing the hat among the patrons, he comes eye-to-eye with Ray, who looks him dead in the eye and does nothing, forcing Colin to move along. Colin is smitten and of course he is. It’s Alexander Skarsgård in leathers looking dangerous as he oozes sexuality. He looks just as dangerous, and oozes even more sexuality, when he orders at the bar and silently expects Colin to pay. Which he does and of course he does. Same reason.
In short order, Colin has ditched the awkward blind date set up by his mother (Lesley Sharp) and returned home to brood alone in his room. In escaping his family’s holiday cheer, and the picture-perfect romance his parents have, he volunteers to walk the dog, and fate steps in. There, in deserted snowy street is Ray, walking his own dog. Without a word, he ties the canine up and walks up the street giving Colin a brief but meaningful look. Colin follows suit with the eagerness of one of those puppy dogs to embrace his new life as a cheerful submissive.
The sex may be rough, but the sentiment, at least for Colin, is pure sweetness. Yes, he’s momentarily flummoxed by the rules Ray sets: sleeping on the floor, doing the housework, leaving his own leather jacket on the floor while Ray’s hangs from a peg, and wrestling with all the eroticism that sport has always telegraphed, but he is game and eager and most of all, again, smitten. In casting Skarsgård, the filmmakers have made manifest why Colin would submit, over and above his newly revealed penchant for the lifestyle. There is no expository dialogue to explain it, no inner monologue other than a few lines of verse Colin composes for his master. This is a purely visual experience with the expressions on Colin’s malleable face of ecstasy in sex and delight in his new identity telling the story in ways that make obvious how words would fall short. That continues during a catastrophic lunch with Colin’s parents, when his mother, in the last stages of a terminal illness, tells Ray off. Ray leaves wordlessly followed by Colin in a decisive moment in the relationships of everyone present.
Ray is deliberately kept an enigma. We learn nothing about him except his sexual preferences. Even in the company of the other bikers and their submissives, there is something more aloof about Ray. Thus, when Colin introduces the idea of love to their relationship, the red flags are set to fly before Ray has any chance to respond. Though at an extreme, it’s at this point that the power dynamics of love supplant those of sex, and the possibility of intimacy is revealed as the ultimate, and most perilous, surrender of self. The games Ray plays with Colin are a new kind of punishment and that oldest of truism is addressed. The submissive is, ultimately, the one with all the power and giving or receiving that kiss will change everything.
PILLION presents the loving relationship of Colin’s parents as the standard for which the young man yearns. Finding it, like any quest for true love, particularly one idealized and ingrained, demands risk, but more, it demands a clear understanding that there is no one blueprint for that ideal. Funny, heartbreaking, and ultimately exhilarating on many, many levels, here is a new sub-genre of rom-com, and one that is as arresting as it is enchanting.
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