Pillion: This Gay BDSM Film Starring Alexander Skarsgård Is Bold, Bleak & Beautiful
Image: IMDb
After months of anticipation and plenty of hype, gay BDSM film Pillion has hit cinemas around the world.
With much hype for the performances — and the intense sex scenes — the film set certain expectations, which it manages to successfully meet! And yet, simultaneously completely circumvent.
Ultimately: Pillion is a bold, bleak, beautiful and thoroughly watchable film.
But Pillion is billed as a “gay BDSM romance” — a description that doesn’t entirely fit what the film delivers.
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Pillion: A complex and moving drama
Pillion is a beautifully dark and brooding film that follows the life of Colin (Harry Melling) a quiet young man in a small British town as he trudges through a dreary life of issuing parking tickets. At home Colin’s mother is dying, desperately trying to set her son up with a good man before she passes.
However, Colin clearly yearns for something and someone more, something darker, more dangerous.
A chance encounter with biker Ray (Alexander Skarsgård) in a bar one night opens doors to a world Colin had never quite imagined he would find himself in — or perhaps the exact world he had yearned for all along.
Colin immediately strikes up a life of subservience to Ray, as he enters a submissive/dominant relationship, diving headfirst into the world of BDSM, kink and leather.
While those terms are never explicitly used, the viewer is boldly transported into this world, which may be foreign to many.
Ray, cold and unmoving, treats Colin like the help, tasking him with daily chores, making him sleep on the floor as well as cooking and cleaning for him. In return, Colin is welcomed into the fold of Ray’s dark and edgy world. This relationship is framed as something that Colin yearns for, as he is seen eager to fawn over and please Ray, appearing joyous and fulfilled at the chance to serve another.
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In a matter of months Colin transforms from choir boy to submissive slave, alarming his family who fail to warm to this alternative lifestyle. Colin appears to fall deeper and deeper in love with his master and his desire to serve becomes stronger. But is it love or longing, is the question that seems to hang over their heads.
Framed against his friends within their community, Ray is notably colder, more absent, unwilling to change or accommodate the relationship he has established. Meanwhile, Colin grows restless in what appears to be an ongoing mission by Ray to wear him down.
Juxtaposed against the relationships of Ray’s friends who all exhibit different dynamics within their submissive/dominant relationships, Ray and Colin’s has the feeling that something isn’t right. As their relationship deepens and the film progresses, there’s a feeling that perhaps Ray’s power balance tips from consensual control to an abuse of power. As Ray pushes away, Colin chases harder as he falls further down the rabbit hole.
Is Colin being set up to be tested by Ray, or has Ray been burned by others in his past? Are Colin and Ray in love or is Colin simply in love with the rush of his world and the escape it brings him from a world of mundane normalcy?
These questions remain an unanswered as Ray smoulders and broods while Colin gently begins to unravel before him.
Sorry to disappoint, but some of the most important points of discussion about this film are best not talked about in a review, for want of not spoiling the ending.
However, it’s worth noting the most climatic peak of the film also becomes the most devastating.
What becomes a beacon of hope and redemption for Ray, who has remained stoic and unmovable for the film’s entirety, instead shifts to the shattering realisation that the world Ray and Colin had built together was even bleaker than it seemed.
As a viewer you’re drawn towards the edge of hope and reason with Colin as he wavers on the edge of fear and freedom, waiting for a final sense of validation and a moment that never comes.
While Pillion is billed as a love story, it ultimately feels like a label that doesn’t fit the final product. Instead, it serves as a powerful exploration of longing, lust, trust, respect, freedom and the search for something more.
Pillion doesn’t deliver a hopeful and joyous film, but it does deliver something bold and beautifully presented.
Visually, the film is gripping, fast paced and completely immersive, that has the viewer watching, hoping and waiting as eagerly as Colin does for Ray.
It’s powerful, important and relatively untold mainstream storytelling that’s an important watch for anyone.
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