Gotham Awards Revue: "Pillion"

by Cláudio Alves

Harry Lighton's Pillion has just opened in UK and Irish cinemas, ahead of a stateside February release by A24. This free adaptation of Adam Mars-Jones' Box Hill novella premiered at Cannes in the Un Certain Regard section, where it won the Best Screenplay prize. Still at the Croisette, Rosie, one of its canine stars, was also laurelled with a special Palm Dog – Mutt Moment Award. Sadly, other voting bodies don't have categories for the likes of Rosie, though Pillion has already scored eight BIFA nominations (the main ceremony is tonight!) and two wins for its costumes, hair and makeup. At the Gotham Awards, which will be handed out tomorrow, the film is up for two prizes – Best Adapted Screenplay and Outstanding Supporting Performance for Alexander Skarsgård. 

All this talk of awards may obfuscate what a fascinating piece of work Pillion turns out to be. Sensual like the kiss of leather straps on hard muscle, as tender as a fresh purpling bruise, Lighton's feature directorial debut is unlike most visions of queer love that get welcomed into the picture house…

A motorcycle's engine revs up, a grumble that sounds deep, subterranean, before emerging, soaring, as a roar. In the dark, the beast sings a song of speed, its metallic voice harmonizing with the crack of chill night air, the wind, the shattered quiet of an empty road. Sound communicates plenty and evokes more so, no need for words or further articulation, both in life and in the dream of cinema. Indeed, this is how Pillion begins, putting the audience under its spell through their ears when the blackness of a title screen still hasn't given way to something more concrete. But even after this opening, director Harry Lighton will return to Gunnar Óskarsson's sound design as a key tenet of his storytelling strategies.

During a first date – if a back-alley blowjob can be called that – the sound of steps does what voices will not. The thudding of heavy boots on wet pavement insinuates itself above the pitter-patter of soft soles, the softer nervous walk of a softer nervous man. Such hardness has purpose, steps measured and deliberate. An invitation comes hand in hand with that sense of purpose. Well, not an invitation so much as a command. More expressive noises will manifest, including the wetness of an inexperienced mouth wrapping around an experienced prick, gagging melting into moans, something that could be pleasure or a suffocation. 

The snaking down of a long zipper, opening up biker leathers to reveal what lies beneath, is especially memorable. Nevertheless, neither zip nor choke nor swallowed orgasm can compete with the scene's most perverse sonic flourish. For the sickest thing is how Lighton juxtaposes the queer transgression of public sex - not quite anonymous but close - and the heteronormative kitsch of two old marrieds serenading each other on the piano. It's Christmastime, the music tastes like pudding and peppermint, yet their son's mouth tastes like cum. It drips, warm and thick, from the toothy grin of a young man who's just sucked cock for the first time in his life. 

Colin's the name of this prodigal son, aged up from the eighteen-year-old in Mars-Jones' book, but still living with his parents. We first meet him in the back seat of their family car, being driven to a pub where his barbershop quartet will perform a holiday ditty. It's a momentous occasion, for his dad is a fellow singer, while mom has tagged along to better set Colin up with a nice young man she found for him. One would suppose all this would cause some degree of trepidation, yet our protagonist appears bored. Or as bored as his introverted, people-pleasing tendencies will allow him to express. Only a figure on the road sparks his interest, a prowling predatorial creature, leather-clad and helmeted, almost inhuman.

Perhaps superhuman is a better descriptor. Because he's there at the pub and he's very much a man, blonde and bearded, sculpted by the gods, effortlessly authoritative – a perfect man to some. He's Ray and he leads a flock of fellow bikers whose revelry couldn't be more open, queerer, more out of place and uninterested in fitting into the pub crowd. They parade their dom-sub dynamics for all to see, though the public kink doesn't feel like a provocation. These folks aren't interested in being a spectacle, content to remain in their little bubble of forbidden pleasures. And like a moth to a flame, Colin is drawn to them. For some reason, Ray seems to be drawn to the younger man, too.

Soon enough, he's at Colin's side, sliding into frame like Sister Ruth in Black Narcissus. Fine, maybe it's not as cartoonishly horny as that Powell and Pressburger move, but it's close. Lighton constructs the moment in a close-up of Harry Melling's Colin that turns into another thing altogether when Alexander Skarsgård slides into frame. Fuzzy at first, he materializes through a focus pull, Ray and the director shifting the gears of the shot, the film, of Colin's life. In the blink of an eye, days pass, the first date comes and then a second, a night spent at the older man's flat and a new routine. In their asymmetrical relationship, Colin cooks and cleans and obeys, he sleeps on the floor and wears Ray's chain around his neck, marking himself as the dom's property. 

It's awful fast, yet Lighton does plenty to immerse the audience into Colin's subjectivity, to the point where the quickness feels inevitable. Remember the sound wizardry? It's all about the hypnotic derealization of desire, with the images following suit. There's only you and him on that motorcycle, the world around an abstraction of light and shadow and nothing in particular. For nothing else matters, only your hand on his flat stomach, your helmeted head against his strong, broad back. The machine roars, the displaced air screeches, a banshee's howl or an angel choir announcing you're arriving at your own personal heaven. Or hell. Both? The incursions of a men's chorus in Oliver Coates' score suggest both.

Melling certainly lets both possibilities coexist in his performance, at least for a while. When asked, Colin states he's willing to give Ray whatever he wants, a sentiment the actor delivers beautifully, full of awkwardness and dazed want, an inarticulate need to give himself over to another who's in control. He further finds the humor in the fellow's defense mechanisms, the learned lessons of polite society that suggest what they're doing is wrong, indecent, unthinkable. For Colin and, by extension, the viewer, this journey is one of entering a world of different expectations, rules, roles, and social codes upended. It's finding liberation in submission, self-possession in prostration. How thrilling! How risky! How… tricky.

Consider the scene when Colin is penetrated by Ray, by anyone, for the first time. It starts with the visual gag of the pair wrestling in cut-out fetish singlets to the sound of "I Think We're Alone Now." It's a comedic snippet that turns into something else that, in Mars-Jones' original work, could be compared to rape. Still, in the film, Colin isn't just being fucked or aggressed. He's an active participant whose enjoyment isn't necessarily in spite of pain and discomfort and indignity, but because of it. Those are all closely connected, and Melling portrays the confusion of discovering those feelings while a cock is shoved up your ass. It's not just him, though. Ray is mysterious throughout, but he's not a total mystery. 

Skarsgård's work illuminates variations in his domineering persona. A smile here, a tenderness that escapes between the lines there, sometimes against Ray's will. And those kernels of love are precious. For Colin, they're enough. For now. Relationships evolve and, for someone discovering their sexuality, this development is inevitable. It comes a time when Colin wants more, when he's found that, even within the dom-sub dynamic, there are things he prefers to others. For instance, at multiple junctures, Lighton finds him looking at Ray cleaning his bike in the morning. It's almost as if Colin is being caressed by proxy, projecting himself on the machine so he can feel a modicum of gentility. Because he needs it. And because needs change.

Pillion understands this as few other films have, burying itself so decisively in the queer specificities of its milieu that one is left ecstatic yet cautious. I hope to see it reach wider audiences while, at the same time, doubting anyone too outside the groups portrayed will appreciate what it's doing. I feel about it similarly to how I felt about Babygirl, whose clarity of purpose was lost to many who don't seem to understand submission as anything other than degrading, actively harmful. Comparing Pillion to Box Hill, I wonder if this was a concern of Lighton. Both as director and especially as screenwriter, he has diverged from the original text in ways that point to a need to bulletproof his film against readings that would posit kink as inherently damaging.  

In fact, that fear is reflected in Colin's parents. They start by encouraging the coupling – one of the most significant adaptation changes that goes along with taking the story from the 70s to the 2020s – recognizing a need for their son to grow up and experiment, to stray from home. Initially, he even seems better at his job, suddenly at peace with customer abuse. But there are things they can't accept. The shaving, the unflappable obedience, the apparent effacement of the sub's needs in the face of his dom. In the parents' eyes, what Colin and Ray have could almost be seen as some bizarre echo of an archaic heterosexual marriage. Or worse, an abusive relationship.

Lesley Sharp and Douglas Hodge are superb at conveying the open affection of this codependent couple, as well as open-mindedness. Yet, even in this performance, one senses the conditionality of their approval. Not out of malice, but a simple lack of understanding. There's no moral judgment of this failing on Lighton's part, though. Pillion "gets" them as much as it gets the kinksters, resisting sensationalizing either side on the spectrum between normative desire and supposed deviance. And really, how does one explain to one's devoted, accepting and deeply vanilla parents that the most intimate moment between lovers can be a public bacchanalia in the middle of the woods?

Perhaps the answer is that they show them Pillion, so I suppose there's educational potential here. Between Lighton, his crew and superlative actors, Ray fucking Colin after his pierced prick has already been lubed up by another sub's spit is a magical scene whose emotions are challenging to explain, yet heartfelt, even romantic. Later in Pillion, the dom will say that what they have isn't about love and it will sound like a lie, precisely because we've already witnessed that orgiastic display. Skarsgård is Liza as Sally Bowles, singing that life is a cabaret in a desperate attempt to make herself believe the falsehood. And that's when the film pulls the rug from under us, igniting a final act I don't want to spoil.

Much of it comes down to notions of consent, boundaries - emotional and physical - and how much Lighton is willing to work with Box Hill to reveal different dimensions that weren't or couldn't be there. This never means Pillion bows out of its transgressive queerness or dons the costume of convention over the essence of an unapologetic dom-sub rom-com. Quite the opposite. Commendably, it lets the characters remain true to themselves and rejects clear-cut solutions to their entanglement. And as is often true in life, the specific paves the way for the universal – hateful word – making this film more than just the tale of a twink with an aptitude for devotion and his fantasy made flesh. More than the lack of pride that completes the novella's title - Box Hill: A Story of Low Self-Esteem.

It’s about the vulnerability of love, the intersection of desire and selfhood. And yes, it’s about sex.

On a final note, and because this review is part of our Gotham Awards coverage, let me return to Skarsgård. There's a mystical quality to Ray on the page that might pull this portrayal of domination and submission away from the real world and into an unreality that can only thrive in fiction, that of the page, of the screen, of role play. But the actor makes him human. He makes him tender, too, fragile, sweet, a universe of possibilities aroused within a tight biker getup. What he accomplishes in Pillion's last act is especially brilliant. It's the best work of his career, culminating in a close-up of such shocking emotional clarity that you feel as if you've just been zapped by electric current. The feeling can't be denied or disobeyed. Neither can Ray. Neither can Pillion. So be good, and submit. 

If you're in the UK and Ireland, Pillion is currently in theaters. For US audiences, the film will be coming to cinemas on February 6, right in time for some risqué Valentine's Day screenings.