For every foible, there’s a quirk. Pillion is based on Adam Mars-Jones’s 2020 novella Box Hill, about a shy, 18-year-old boy called Colin, who is thrust suddenly into an obsessive BDSM relationship with an imperious, handsome biker in his late twenties, Ray.
It is, as Mars-Jones says in his dedication, a murky brew. Colin is pretty abject: short, fat, lame and bullied at school – as well as naive. The first time he and Ray have sex “what had begun as a rough seduction ended as, well, rape”, he tells us unambiguously.
The book was almost a “black joke”, Mars-Jones has owned. Whereas 50 years ago straight readers might characterise gay people as weak, corrupt and perverse, “nowadays the same readership, for fear of seeming homophobic, will condone behaviour that would instantly be condemned if the participants weren’t gay”. He set out “to write scenes that would test a phoney tolerance to breaking point”.
Box Hill has been radically adapted by the 33-year-old writer-director Harry Lighton, his first feature. Having considered relocating the story to ancient Rome or a cruise ship, he settled back on Bromley, south London, but much else has been changed. The setting is contemporary, not 1975 before the Aids crisis. There is no voiceover to emulate the novel’s nostalgic first-person retrospective. Colin (Harry Melling, Dudley Dursley in Harry Potter, the limbless man in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs) is in his thirties; Ray (Alexander Skarsgård, 49) is markedly older too. The relationship lasts a few months, not six years, and it ends not when Ray comes off his bike but when the pair try a romantic day out, dropping their strictly observed sub/dom roles.
It’s been turned into a Christmas story as well. We meet Colin in a pub on Christmas Eve, singing in a barbershop quartet wearing a blazer and boater, alongside his dad (Douglas Hodge). He’s been set up on a blind date there by his mum (Lesley Sharp) – both his parents being supportive of his timid gay life. The date is hopeless but Ray, so tall, so handsome, having silently dominated Colin into paying for a round of crisps at the bar for his biker friends, slips him a Christmas card inscribed simply: “Primark Bromley tomo 5pm.”
After a family Christmas lunch, Colin sets off with a little dog, wearing his dad’s old leather jacket. Ray, in full leathers, with a big dog, leads him into an alley. “What am I going to do with you?” he says, almost to himself. “Whatever you want, really,” says Colin, gazing up at this godlike figure, entranced. Forcing Colin to his knees, Ray asks: “Do you give?” Then he unzips for a blowjob, ordering Colin to lick his boots, before allowing him to finish the job. Colin is entranced, giggling with happiness. They exchange names for the first time. Colin apologises for being a bit hopeless, saying he just needs practice. “Merry Christmas! Thank you!” he calls out as Ray stalks off. Back home, his mum enthusiastically asks: “Did you kiss?”
Skarsgård is unyieldingly imposing despite playing a character with no backstory and who gives nothing but monosyllabic orders. Melling, looking a bit like a cute Gollum, is his match: desperately grateful and eager to serve, wide-eyed with delight at what he is discovering within himself.
A few days later, Colin is taken on the pillion of Ray’s bike to his stark flat in Chislehurst, and inducted into a new life. “Buy yourself a butt plug, you’re too tight,” Ray instructs him, after a pitiless initiation. “Lovely,” says Colin, “that sounds like a plan.” He is permitted only to sleep on the floor, and soon he has shaved his head and wears a chain padlocked around his neck.
In a rapturous pastoral sequence, the gay biker gang Ray leads set off into the countryside. They make camp, skinny-dipping in a river, before the subs are served up to the doms, splayed over tables. Colin is ecstatic to have rough, face-to-face sex with Ray, though they do not kiss. When they finally do, in a quasi-romcom coda, it’s as terminal to their relationship as it is fulfilling.
Harry Lighton made contact with the Gay Bikers Motorcycle Club to participate in these scenes, not all young or in good shape. He has filmed transgressive sex with remarkable naturalness, avoiding the positivity that queer cinema has hitherto demanded. “I always wanted to leave the judgement in the audience’s hands,” he says.
That is beautifully achieved in this accomplished debut – pretty much the film Fifty Shades failed to be. Would it be condemned if the participants weren’t gay? Perhaps. “But people can care about anything,” as Colin generously concludes in Box Hill.
Pillion is in cinemas now
[Further reading: We will never make peace with Bridget Jones]
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This article appears in the 26 Nov 2025 issue of the New Statesman, The Last Stand