Cannes Review: Pillion is a Provocative, Funny, and Touching Anti-Romance

It wouldn’t be Cannes without a good scandal film. For 2025, British director Harry Lighton’s feature debut Pillion may be the one that sends the most people clutching their pearls. Centered on a dom-sub relationship within the gay biker milieu, it features depictions of fetishistic sex acts that could trigger a few sensitive souls. It […] The post Cannes Review: Pillion is a Provocative, Funny, and Touching Anti-Romance first appeared on The Film Stage.

May 19, 2025 - 15:05

Cannes Review: Pillion is a Provocative, Funny, and Touching Anti-Romance

It wouldn’t be Cannes without a good scandal film. For 2025, British director Harry Lighton’s feature debut Pillion may be the one that sends the most people clutching their pearls. Centered on a dom-sub relationship within the gay biker milieu, it features depictions of fetishistic sex acts that could trigger a few sensitive souls. It would be a shame, however, if all attention is directed at the kinks and shocks––Lighton has made a truly provocative anti-romance that’s funny, honest, strangely touching. It’s an exceptional balance act that makes Pillion the unlikeliest crowd-pleaser.

Colin (Harry Melling) is a meek, scrawny young man still living with his parents and struggling to find love. It’s Christmas and we see him singing carols at the pub where his mother has set up a date. It isn’t going well, but at some point Colin meets the mysterious, improbably handsome biker Ray (Alexander Skarsgård) who, apparently seeing something in this timid creature, asks Colin to meet him the next day. After that first, immediately sexual rendezvous involving some boot-licking, Ray and Colin start spending time in ways you won’t see in Pretty Woman or Notting Hill. More than submitting himself to Ray’s appetite for rough sex, Colin quickly learns he is to obey Ray’s every command: shaving his head, changing his look, cooking and shopping for him. After a day spent in servitude, he’s allowed to sleep on the floor next to Ray’s bed if he promises not to snore. He should not expect any words or gestures of tenderness from Ray, and kissing is out of the question.

On the one hand, Colin’s friends can’t believe he is with someone as hot as Ray. On the other, his mother doesn’t understand why her son is letting himself be abused, sticking around like a good puppy who grows more and more attached to a master who won’t show love.

Written by Lighton and Adam Mars-Jones, Pillion examines, with great frankness, aspects of human sexuality around domination and submission. Whether or not one can relate to sexual gratification borne of power dynamics, the material rings true. It doesn’t attempt to make Ray less of a jerk in his objectively appalling treatment of Colin, and subtracts shame from any eagerness with which Colin receives mistreatment. Such fearless candor ensures that, whatever the more outlandish scenarios, Pillion never loses a core human truth.

And yes: it is often very funny. The personality clash between uptight, inexperienced Colin and über-confident sex God Ray leads to some hilarious exchanges (most notably Ray reluctantly joining Colin’s parents for lunch). More impressive is how the script finds a deeper exploration of these two during an unexpectedly poignant third act. What is this thing shared by Colin and Ray, anyway? Does love have anything to do with it? Do we have to put a name on it? Do they? Can both of them be happy not knowing the answers to these questions? One might think the film is succumbing to implausible laws of Hollywood romcoms when Ray agrees to give Colin a “day off.” But a final twist takes you straight back to reality and redefines––so eloquently and unsentimentally––a true love’s kiss.

Both Melling and Skarsgård are terrific in this yin-yang two-hander, a high-octane project that would not have worked if either weren’t fully committed. Melling is captivating as someone who’s discovering their sexuality in front of our eyes: the awkwardness of his entire being when Colin first enters Ray’s world of openly sexual bikers, all clad in head-to-toe fetish gear, is pure pleasure. And when we see him again singing at the pub near film’s end, it’s an altogether different person––one far more attuned to his needs and desires. Even if you don’t quite understand why this character craves what he does, one can’t help rooting. Ray is enigmatic by design. We know little outside his sexual preferences, yet in Skarsgård’s expertly measured performance there’s the constant sense of a life hidden beneath an impenetrable façade. The most compelling proof of which can be found in his final close-up: though Ray doesn’t speak, a slightly changed expression conveys both what has happened and what will transpire. It breaks your heart a little.

Human beings tick in all kinds of inexplicable ways; it’s the storyteller’s job to investigate the instincts and impulses, from noble to unspeakable, that make us what we are. Pillion tackles a somewhat niche subject but never feels less-than-truthful portraying two people locked in unusual codependence. Lighton should be congratulated for this sharp, daring first feature, one that skirts judgement while exposing (literally and figuratively) so much.

Pillion premiered at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival and will be released by A24.

The post Cannes Review: Pillion is a Provocative, Funny, and Touching Anti-Romance first appeared on The Film Stage.