Review: PILLION

 by Rob DiCristino

Because there’s no B.D.S.M. without L.O.V.E.

We’re only a few weeks in, but 2026 has already proved to be an embarrassment of riches. In January alone, we got an IP sequel with genuine pathos (28 Years Later: The Bone Temple), a winning horror/comedy from a beloved auteur (Send Help), and hell, we even got to see one of the world’s most powerful corporations launder a bribe — allegedly — for the sitting U.S. president (Melania)! Now the calendar turns to February, and A24 brings us Harry Lighton’s Pillion, the sweetest, most endearing BDSM romantic comedy of the year. Based on Adam Mars-Jones’ novel Box Hill, the film stars Harry Melling (Harry Potter’s Dudley Dursley) as Colin, an unassuming introvert who begins a submissive partnership with the impossibly attractive Ray (Alexander Skarsgård), a taciturn biker whose essential unknowability only adds to his devastating allure. It may not be the kind of relationship his doting parents (Douglas Hodge and Lesley Sharpe) imagined for him, but it’s unlocking something exhilarating in Colin that he never knew was there before.

While it certainly features more butt plugs, assless chaps, and public orgies than your typical Hollywood rom-com, Pillion — I’ll admit I had to look that up; it’s the term for a motorcycle’s passenger seat — is otherwise lovingly faithful to the classical genre structure that many of us know so well. Colin and Ray have a meet-cute on Christmas Day, begin a timid courtship, overcome some initial awkwardness, establish a domestic routine, and eventually confront the personality differences that conspire to tear them apart. While that might sound like an insult that equates Harry Lighton’s feature debut with the glossy, stomach-churning slop we find on the Hallmark Channel, it’s actually that slavish — no pun intended — devotion to the familiar that makes Pillion so remarkable: The film treats this dominant/submissive relationship like any other pairing, one replete with the very same infatuations, setbacks, suspicions, regrets, and heartbreaks you’d find between couples in which one member doesn’t happen to sleep on the floor at the foot of the bed.

So much of that warmth comes from Harry Melling’s disarming performance as Colin, a meter reader by day/quartet singer by night with whom we cannot help but fall in immediate and irrevocable love. He’s a good lad, a dyed-in-the-wool mama’s boy, and while we might bristle at the pathological “mistreatment” Ray seems to be inflicting upon him — Colin cooks Ray’s meals, does Ray’s shopping, and takes Ray’s not unimpressive penis into his orifices without the courtesy of a coat rack, let alone a kiss — Colin’s sheer joy in the face of this would-be torture compels us to cheer him on through each new task. Before long, Colin’s shaving his head, wearing a bespoke motorcycle jacket, and sporting a locked chain around his neck — the key dangles from Ray’s own matching chain — fully devoted to a master who begins rewarding that zeal with the occasional sprinkles of affection and, in a sequence of earth-shattering ecstasy that lit my preview audience on fire, a birthday fuck in the missionary position — with eye contact and everything!

But does Ray love Colin? It’s a tricky question, one that challenges our preconceived notions — and Colin’s, who asks if love isn’t “the point of everything” — about what a relationship can or should be. Alexander Skarsgård makes for the perfect embodiment of such an existential quagmire, as his physical perfection and emotional aloofness conspire to haunt Pillion’s audience throughout the film. Really, what wouldn’t you sacrifice to be with this man? What boundaries wouldn’t suddenly become permeable? What obligations wouldn’t suddenly become negotiable? I mean, Ray isn’t always wooden — well, there are times when he is, but that’s a whole separate thing in a whole different way — and it’s those flashes of vulnerability that come across in the tiniest throwaway glances and provide a peek into an inner life that Lighton’s screenplay wisely chooses never to illuminate entirely. In the end, it’s not important that we approve of Ray — or so he tells Colin’s mom in one particularly heated exchange — as long as Colin approves of him.

Pillion has fun toying with these melodramatic complications — there are moments when Colin challenges Ray’s dominance that will force your heart right up into your throat — but it never loses sight of the exalted joy Colin finds in this relationship, the commanding level-up in self-esteem he achieves by the time we reach the film’s heartwarming coda. Pillion is a love story, after all, and what is a love story if not a journey toward personal growth? It’s also very, very funny and, crucially, generates heaps of legitimate insight without condescending to BDSM relationships. It never otherizes them or insists that they’re something we’re supposed to overcome on the road to “traditional” intimacy. The question is never “Should Colin be a sub?” or worse, “Is being a sub okay?” Rather, the question is “Who deserves Colin’s endless devotion?” Or yours, for that matter? Or mine? I’ll tell you one thing: I believe I deserve to have Alexander Skarsgård toss me around the living room in assless wrestling tights. Who do I need to call to make that happen?

Pillion hits U.S. theaters in limited release on Friday, February 6th.