Pillion (2025)

Pillion is a sensational feature debut by Harry Lighton with graphic images of sub-dom gay sex.

Hard Rider

by Alexa Dalby

Pillion
0.0 out of 5.0 stars

CAUTION: Here be spoilers

I had difficulties with the comic, almost absurd, tone of Pillion at first but I realised there is something true at the heart of it. I can see why Pillion and its provocative director created so much buzz for its world premiere in 2025 at the Cannes Film Festival. But remember the essence not the show. The film takes place, incongruously for its gay dom-sub subject matter, in the staid, commuterish borders of southeast London and Kent – Bromley and Chislehurst.

Colin (Harry Melling, Harry Potter films). is suburban, timid and naively eager to please, despite the best efforts of his parents (Lesley Sharp and Douglas Hodge) to find him a boyfriend. He is a pathetic but also sympathetic character. Singing at the local pub in blazer and boater with his dad’s barbershop quartet, he bumps into a handsome stranger at the bar, who summons him to an assignation on Christmas Day. Colin thinks it’s a date but it turns out to be just a blow job in a dark alley next to Primark in Croydon.

Despite his inexperience, this leads on to a BDSM relationship with the mysterious, enigmatic and controlling gay biker, Ray (Alexander Skarsgård). (Hence the warnings about the film’s graphic nature, which shows some of the details of it, though not how Colin’s haircut happened.)

Another submissive partner of a gay biker is Jake Shears (remarkable film debut) of Scissor Sisters, who reveals to Colin what he thinks about their situation when the bikers are on a memorable – to Colin and viewers, for many reasons, group camping trip in the country. Extras are real members of the Gay Bikers Motorcycle Club, who helped the director with his research.

Colin eventually finds freedom, and his true self – an “aptitude for devotion”. Ray seems to find the fleeting glimpse of ‘normal’ emotions Colin shows him too easy to slip back into, too boring – or too frightening.

Pillion is adapted from/inspired by the novella Box Hill by Adam Mars-Jones by debut director Harry Lighton. The cinematography by Nick Morris is stunning and conveys both the restriction of BDSM and the freedom of biking on the open road. Pillion is a great symbol for the image of submissives riding behind their fetishist biker lovers. It is also gay slang for the passive recipients of sex and/or BDSM.

Whether Colin and Ray’s relationship is consensual BDSM or an abusive relationship. as portrayed in the film, is open to interpretation.