Programme Notes: Pillion

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Pillion Programme Notes

Please note: these programme notes contain descriptions of plot and characters and are best read after watching the film.

The film begins with a familiar set-up of a lust object: a mysterious figure speeding down the road, his leather-coated form exposed to the dangers of the road, a helmet shielding his undoubtedly handsome face. He’s the bad boy, the risk taker, the mystery man of steamy romance novels and B-movies – but the roads he’s speeding down are on the outskirts of Bromley, and he’s being gazed at from the backseat of the family hatchback on the way to the pub.

Director Harry Lighton’s Pillion – the word for riding in the seat behind a motorcyclist – is a quintessentially British BDSM rom-com. Based on the excellent novel Box Hill by cultural critic and novelist Adam Mars-Jones – on co-writer duties with Lighton here – it transfers the story from the 1970s to the present day, following a young man who finds himself, and his sexual proclivities, through a dom/sub relationship with a mysterious biker.

Our hero is Colin, played by the fantastic Harry Melling in his first leading role. Melling got his start playing Dudley Dursley in the Harry Potter series, and has since made a case for himself as a promising character actor in the likes of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Dir. Ethan and Joel Coen, 2018) and Please Baby Please (Dir. Amanda Kramer, 2022). He plays Colin with great charm, vulnerable and quiet determinism: Box Hill is subtitled “A Story of Low Self-Esteem”, but in Melling’s hands Colin’s relationship to his self-esteem is complicated.

When we meet Colin, he’s performing in the local pub on Christmas Eve as part of a barbershop quartet. His mother – played by the formidable Lesley Sharp – has set him up on a date afterwards, but the man he meets pales in comparison to the surly biker he spots writing Christmas cards in the corner. This is Ray, infused with sexy stoicism by Alexander Skarsgård. Colin excuses himself from Christmas dinner washing up to meet Ray for a hookup, to the delight of his mum (“Don’t listen to your brother – it’s an adventure! A biker sounds exciting!”).

Pillion’s first sex scene is emblematic of the film’s combination of kinky allure and situational comedy. Round the back of Bromley Primark, Ray slowly unzips his leather jumpsuit, his crotch framed like a Mapplethorpe photo. He instructs Colin to lick his boot, and Colin goes willingly, if cluelessly. The couple’s subsequent dom/sub relationship is entered into with the same sense of enthusiasm, but with ambiguous consent. Ray grunts his orders – pick that up, make me dinner, sleep on the bedroom floor – and Colin just… follows along, waiting for a response from Ray that doesn’t come. He gives absolutely nothing away to the point of suspicion – from the audience, if not Colin himself. His flat is comically nondescript, its empty shelves and blank walls the subtly excellent work of Production Designer Francesca Massariol. Ray is an experienced dom, but there are no conversations around boundaries or rules. But how should Colin know there should be? And why would he ask, when he’s dumbstruck just looking at Ray? As another character later observes, “he really is impossibly handsome… you sort of bring his qualities into relief”.

Then Colin meets Ray’s gay biker gang. By now, Colin’s appearance has changed; his shaved head and locked chain necklace are treasured symbols of belonging. The gang go on day trips, riding bikes, grappling in ponds – so much of the sex in Pillion is grappling – and laying on a somewhat unusual countryside picnic spread. When Colin interacts with the other subs, he starts realising that they’re having a bit more fun than him; that maybe a dom should offer security as well as authority. Kevin, played by Scissor Sisters’ Jake Shears, sits down for a heart-to-heart with Colin and makes him insecure about what he’s missing out on. They really don’t kiss? He’d miss kissing. He couldn’t do that. But Colin’s fine with it! Honestly!

Craving some traditional normality alongside his new normal in the BDSM biker world, Colin finally persuades Ray to come meet his parents for Sunday lunch. After a back-and-forth about gravy recipes, his mum asks Ray what we’ve all been thinking: “What’s up with you? Have you got another life? Have you got a husband somewhere? Or a wife?” Ray accuses her of not understanding the dynamics of their relationship (“It’s not for you to like”) but something clicks with Colin – maybe she’s not understanding it fully, maybe she can’t, but there’s something wrong. Where the film goes and how Colin tries to redress the balance while still thriving in his role as a sub feels like a triumph – of sexual freedom, of the coexistence of different forms of control, and of Colin’s rocky self-esteem.

Pillion succeeds – and is such a fun watch – because it understands that kink relationships are, at their core, not much different from the kind of relationships we are used to seeing in (straight) romantic comedies. As Colin learns, everyone needs care, autonomy and the enthusiastic meeting of their sexual needs – it’s just packaged differently for different people. The world Pillion exists in also seems to inherently get this: Colin’s mum has questions but is supportive, there are bikers in the pub at Christmas playing darts as their subs kneel at their feet. In the current climate for LGBTQ people, perhaps this normality comes across as slightly utopian, or at least the reality of a recent past that now feels lost forever. But it’s a reminder that most normal people in this country don’t give a shit about queer people or what they get up to – that leathermen are as much as part of British culture as Sunday lunch or Christmas lights on a smalltown high street.

Claire Biddles - freelance music and film writer and radio host

25 November 2025

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