Joel on Film

There is a brief moment in Pillion that speaks loudest about its central relationship, which is based in the dynamics between the submissive and the dominant, and it has nothing to do with the skin-tight outfits, the various props, or the sexual games between the two main characters. One is a meek and mild-mannered lounge singer, one among an act of four who croon in a club, and the other is a tall drink of water who hangs with a crowd of bikers. You can probably guess which of these men fills which role in this romance.

Anyway, the moment at hand involves, of all things, a birthday card. Colin (Harry Melling), the sort-of dullard who would rather be led, is celebrating his birthday with his two parents—his gregarious father (played by Douglas Hodge), who is also in that club act, and his mother (played by Lesley Sharp), who has just recently discovered that her illness is killing her. It’s a quiet birthday tea, made just a bit more spectacular with a sparkler and some candles, but then Colin gets a phone call. It’s his new boyfriend, who requires some items from the local store posthaste: Colin, in answering, jots down the list of items on the inside of his newly opened card, right next to the written wishes of his dear and soon-to-be-departed mother.

It’s not a particularly loud or even obvious moment, but the detail does speak to the ability of Harry Lighton’s debut feature (adapted from Adam Mars-Jones’ novel Box Hill) to communicate the nature of these men, this relationship, and what the latter says about the former. The biggest surprise, though, is just how compassionate and incisive and gently comic this movie is about the type of romance that requires such commitment and devotion. After all, Colin, as he tells a friend at one point, is most attractive to the mercurial Ray (Alexander Skarsgård) for his “aptitude for devotion.”

The content of the movie, by the way, quickly reveals why it has been released without a rating in the United States—the better to avoid a more specific rating, which would limit the ability to advertise a movie destined to delight anyone who stumbles upon it. This is a comedy, first and foremost, because Colin and Ray are both instantly recognizable archetypes for the type of man each of the actors is playing. There are depths to these characters, as this relationship unfolds with all the internal and bubbling tension of a “normal” relationship, but there is also very much a surface-level quality to them that is, again, recognizable and quite funny.

Colin, for instance, changes his appearance—shaving his head and donning a lock-and-chain around his neck to match Ray’s dangling key—and adapts his style of living to accommodate the new arrangements. That might involve cooking every meal, without fail, or sleeping on a blanket at the foot of Ray’s bed. These arrangements are fairly permanent, by the way, because Ray is hard to read, speaks few words without a lot of thought and introspection, and does not welcome disruption in his well-kept life.

For as much as these characters come to know and genuinely grow to like each other, we also—and, perhaps, more importantly—arrive at that same place of basically equal appreciation. In no small part, that’s because of the actors: Skarsgård towers over everyone onscreen (Lighton constantly captures him in upward angles from around the knees or waste, so that he dominates us, too) but also allows little moments of understanding to crack the surface. Melling, though, is truly great here, with his huge round eyes and meek body language growing in stature as his confidence also grows.

Eventually and inevitably, the formal arrangement of this relationship must be tested, but Lighton is intelligent about the way he does it, allowing the other shoe to drop so that each of these men—Colin in his supplication, Ray in his carefully curated coolness—can prove to each other and to us what the nature of that arrangement really means when the going gets rough. A sick parent, for instance, can likely be counted on to kick the bucket, and in the wake of fragile reality like that, adaptation is necessary to any form of survival. The cracks can only spider-web into every facet of their union.

For a movie that’s so funny and smart, raunchy and sweet, that Lighton is able to take this relationship seriously and follow it to a natural endpoint, while also retaining the messy feeling of genuine lives being lived, is an achievement not to be ignored or downplayed. Yes, there is convention lingering at the naughty edges of this movie, but the filmmaker sidesteps those deftly and considers the complexities with a lot of grace.

Rating: ***½ (out of ****)