Colin (Harry Melling), a barbershop choir member and traffic warden who still lives with his parents, falls in love with hunky biker Ray (Alexander Skarsgård) and begins a dom-sub BDSM relationship that tests the limits of his newly found “aptitude for devotion”. 

In his audacious feature debut, British filmmaker Harry Lighton plays with the codes of the romantic comedy – including a meet-cute at a bar and a transformation montage – spicing them up with leather jackets and padlocked chains. Based on Adam Mars-Jones’s book Box Hill, this unpredictable and sweet boy-meets-biker story extracts much of its humour from the contrast between Colin and Ray’s sub-dom role play and the suburban bliss of Colin’s parents – never poking fun at its characters, but rather at the random conventions of both these environments. 

In Pillion, BDSM intensifies and makes explicit the rules and power dynamics of ‘normative’ romance. Through the potential discomfort caused by this heightened reality, the film questions our own limits of how much control we are willing to relinquish in the name of love. Its most beautiful moments, though, are the motorcycle riding shots, showcasing the sheer pleasure of being exactly where you are meant to be. Sometimes all you want for Christmas is being told what to do by a tall Swedish hunk.