Pillion, a gay biker romcom dubbed a ‘BDSM Wallace and Gromit’

We speak to director Harry Lighton and co-stars Alexander Skarsgård and Harry Melling about their horny-yet-heartwarming new film

Is it a romcom or, as Alexander Skarsgård calls it, a domcom? Either way, Pillion, the debut feature from writer-director Harry Lighton, isn’t a typical British love story, even if its central relationship develops in the ordinary suburbs of Bromley after a meet-cute on Christmas Day.

Colin (Harry Melling), an introverted traffic warden who still lives with his parents, chances upon a mysterious biker, Ray (Skarsgård), in a pub, the latter suggesting they meet outside a Primark at 5pm. Moments into that first date, Ray leads Colin into an alleyway behind a Pret to ask a question: “Do you give?” Colin, as innocent as he is, doesn’t realise that’s the entirety of the sentence.

Colin’s eventual answer – an emphatic yes – is uttered amidst the agony of Ray’s firm hands crushing his body. Kneeling on the pavement, Colin licks Ray’s boots, gives him a blowjob, then awkwardly yelps, “Thank you.” A power dynamic has been established, as has a philosophy in Colin’s mind: without pain, there can’t be pleasure.

To prepare for the scene, Melling, a 36-year-old English actor who played Dudley Dursley in the Harry Potter films, consulted with the BDSM community. “Some guys told me a successful bootlick involves looking up, and making sure they’re aware of where the tongue is, and the pressure against the leather, and which part of the shoe is more sensitive,” says Melling. “But when I arrived on the day, I thought, ‘This is supposed to be clumsy and awkward.’”

“Yeah,” says Skarsgård, a 49-year-old Swedish actor whose credits include Melancholia, True Blood, and The Northman. “It would have been weird if Ray got the best bootlick of his life. He’d be like, ‘Jesus Christ, you’re good. I don’t need to teach you anything!’”

Lighton, a 33-year-old English director, adapted the script from Adam Mars-Jones’s 1970s-set novel Box Hill. Early versions of the story were set in Ancient Rome and on a cruise ship. In NoMad Hotel, a day before a gala screening at the London Film Festival, Melling is asking Lighton if he could email him the discarded drafts. Skarsgård is also keen on reading “the one with gladiators”. But Lighton refuses, citing “vanity” as his excuse.

After all, Pillion, in one of its finished forms – Lighton has been tinkering with the nudity level at festivals – is a joyous cinema trip that will inevitably spark post-screening conversations. Colin and Ray have a mutual agreement: Ray provides Colin with a shopping list; Colin does Ray’s chores, and sleeps by his floor at night like a dog. To Colin’s parents, it’s an abusive relationship. Yet Colin, a consenting adult, transforms physically (he shaves his head and wears a chain) and, ironically, starts standing up for himself in work situations.

Colin is not alone. The word “pillion” refers to the passenger who sits at the back of a motorcycle, and they comprise half of Ray’s gay biker gang – the actors include Jake Shears of Scissor Sisters and real members of the GBMCC (Gay Bikers Motorcycle Club). At a picnic, the doms play cards, while the subs patiently lean across a table, sticking their bare bottoms into the air. Colin’s smile during the inevitably orgy is glowing, yet he’s perturbed by a fact: he learns that another pillion, unlike him, is allowed to kiss his boyfriend.

It’s looking at something I imagine will not be familiar to lots of people, but there are romcom tropes that people identify with. It’s that balance of the unfamiliar versus the familiar

“I wanted to show other bikers and pillions cuddling after the orgy, because it’s a different form of aftercare,” says Lighton. “Ray and Colin’s relationship isn’t a blueprint.”

“We don’t have a scene where there’s a written sub/dom contract,” says Skarsgård. “That would take away the drama. The audience is with Colin on his journey of trying to figure out: ‘Am I doing the right thing?’”

“It’s looking at something I imagine will not be familiar to lots of people, but there are romcom tropes that people identify with,” says Melling. “It’s that balance of the unfamiliar versus the familiar.”

In his post-Potter years, Melling has increasingly worked with auteurs who make him suffer on screen: the Coen brothers removed his legs in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs; Antonio Campos tortured him with spiders in The Devil All the Time. Skarsgård, I’ve noticed, also tends to be on the receiving end of pain: he starred in The Northman and Infinity Pool. “I like to dish it out as well,” says Skarsgård with a grin.

In fact, a mini-debate ensues as to whether Colin’s mother would be so antagonistic towards Ray if he wasn’t gay. “The fact that her son’s boyfriend is bigger than him might have an impact on her defensiveness,” says Lighton. “But at the beginning, she’s so desperate for her son to find a boyfriend. If it was a woman, she’d feel the same way.”

“Maybe she cuts Ray more slack because he’s gay,” says Skarsgård. “If it was a woman, maybe she’d be like, ‘This fucking bitch is treating you like shit. Dump her!’ Instead, she’s like, ‘OK, I’m hands off.’”

“She’s afraid of being judgemental,” says Lighton. “Colin plays into it by telling his mum, ‘He’s discrete.’ He’s using gay lingo to muzzle her. He’s kind of lying to her, because Ray’s version of discrete is not your typical version of discrete.”

Ray is, indeed, a different kind of discrete: Colin doesn’t know how Ray earns his money, or why there’s three women’s names tattooed on his chest; at home, Ray puts on glasses, plays piano, and reads Karl Ove Knausgård, as if revealing a different personality. In fact, in scenes partially shot with hidden cameras, Ray is clearly unsettled when, at Colin’s request, they visit Bromley Picturehouse (it’s since closed down permanently) and stroll around a shopping centre wearing cotton, not leather.

For Ray, then, the world makes sense when he’s in control, whether it’s in the bedroom or during a quickie behind Pret. Colin, too, is eager to slot – or, rather, be slotted – into the dynamic, as evidenced by sex scenes that capture the confusion and ecstasy in his face. While the sequences aren’t overtly graphic, they’re certainly not the camera panning away like in Call Me Be Your Name.

“I didn’t want the audience to feel like we were being prudish,” says Lighton. “It was important to show a degree of explicitness. But I didn’t want to distract from the psychology of the sex by having loads of full frontal. I went to the theatre the other night, and there was a naked guy on stage, but the lighting was crafted so that you could really see his penis. I felt that everyone was waiting for it to come in and out of the lighting. I didn’t want that with the nudity.”

As for shooting the first date, Lighton says, “When you’re licking a boot in a kink context, you’re doing it for the other person as much as yourself. You have an awareness of doing it at an angle so that someone standing above you can see your tongue. But I didn’t want the film to be particularly stylised. I wanted it to have realism to it. We don’t shift the angle of the tongue to suit the camera. We didn’t dye Harry’s tongue to get rid of the nasty tastebuds.”

Pillion has already developed a cult following. At Cannes, reviews called it a “BDSM Wallace and Gromit” and “Richard Curtis but with butt plugs”. When I question if the Richard Curtis comparison is correct – silent, stoic Ray is the opposite of a Hugh Grant archetype – Skarsgård refers to a different article that praises Pillion as “if Richard Curtis were to adapt The Piano Teacher”.

“There’s a Haneke element to it,” says Skarsgård. “But it’s funny and romantic.”

“It’s quite a British film,” says Lighton. “I wouldn’t say it’s the same Britishness associated with Richard Curtis. But as combinations go, ‘Richard Curtis meets Haneke’ isn’t totally off. I want it to just be me, though.”

“Yeah,” says Melling. “It’s Harry Lighton meets Harry Lighton.”

Pillion is out now in UK cinemas.

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