Harry Lighton’s debut film “Pillion” (2025) was released in U.S. theaters last week. It opened at The Little this past Friday and will be showing for the next two weeks.
Marketed as a ‘Dom-Com,’ the plot focuses on the first relationship of Colin, a barbershop-quartet-singing parking lot attendant, after he is approached by brooding biker, Ray. Set around the holidays, this film is by no means a Christmas couch watch with the family, and probably not recommended as a first date (for a fiftieth, however, it may be a perfect conversation starter between you and your long-time partner), but with friends it was a fantastic time. The gasps and grabs of my close friends were a key part of the movie watching experience.
“Pillion” speaks to even the most vanilla viewer. Learning to love, and to let yourself be loved, is no church off a paved road. The process is filled with terrifying self-confrontations and abuse. It’s something we all go through. The dynamics of submissive-dominant sexual relation is a wonderful metonym for the emotional turmoil that one goes through in vulnerability and intimacy. In Ray, the dom, we find a reflection of our most avoidant self, running away from any modicum of intimacy. Happy to fuck, afraid to kiss. In Colin, the sub, is a portrait of our lack of self-respect, the desire to be loved overpowers any semblance of selfish want. Yearning and pretending to be content with the scraps you are given. This is not the model of a healthy relationship and by no means does the movie present as such. Yet, there is something to be found in the highs and lows of this, a lesson of self. What makes you feel loved? How do you want to love? How do you ask for this?
All these potent questions are clad in leather and hidden behind pasty white ass throughout the film “Pillion.” It teaches us as much about what it means to settle as it does the particulars of homosexual motorcycle BDSM in suburban England.
There is community and heartache relatable to your most copacetic college student even in the cultural extremes “Pillion” depicts. Sitting behind me in the theater, there was a lineup of gay men dressed for the experience. Wearing subtle collars and choke chains, they gathered in pup-play masks to commemorate the experience with selfies with a bare chested Alexander Skarsgard poster, akin to glitter-clad Elphabas and Glindas at “Wicked” showings. There is drama, there is desire, there is decadence and exaltation found in both.
Speaking of Skarsgard, that casting was quite a distraction for a couple of my friends who were unable to mutter anything other than “He’s so fine” for the duration of the film despite all the shock and awe of hard sex. So at the very least, go see this movie to look at a shirtless Skarsgard, and if you like it, maybe go watch “Secretary” (2002).
