Kink is finding its stride as romance novels are flying off the shelves and Heated Rivalry is the hottest show on television. Where Fifty Shades of Grey walked, the new battalion of BDSM enjoyers soar. It’s just as common for a steamy romance to be on the end cap at Target as it used to be for Who Moved My Cheese? or Freakonomics. With this wave we have freshman filmmakers like Harry Lighton using kink and queer love as the setting for his directorial debut, Pillion, casting a veritable movie star like Alexander Skarsgard to play the dom, a biker named Ray, and recognizable character actor Harry Melling to lead the picture as Colin the sub.

Colin is an out gay man living in England with his parents Pete (Douglas Hodge) and Peggy (Lesley Sharp). The film opens with him on a date that his mother set him up with, another gay man showing up to see him perform in a barbershop quartet. Right off the bat we get a feeling for the kind of gentleness this film is setting up. There’s no real tragedy or turmoil, a nice change of pace for a queer film. No one is on drugs, or sick, or even closeted.

Colin quickly meets Ray, who treats him with utter contempt, and Colin is absolutely enamored. The kink is already playing out, and Colin is very into it even as Ray makes Colin buy him a beer, leave his jacket on the ground, and after being invited over, sleep on the rug in his room as opposed to sharing a bed with him. Most of Ray’s interactions are tantamount to abusive if both parties were not consenting. He makes Colin cook every meal for him, do all his shopping, and then buys him a chain for which only he has the key. Washing out the gender roles seems like the only way you could make a movie about this, a smart move from Director Lighton.

Throughout the picture Colin’s parents keep asking about Ray, about what his relationship is like. The two provide an ample amount of comedy for the film. As loving as they are of their son, they are wrestling with his queerness as well as his kink in this new relationship. It paints the ways in which they don’t understand the differences with humor, as well as showing that their chief concern is for the well being of their son. Eventually the four of them get dinner together, an awkward affair as Colin sports his chain collar and quickly gets up to get Ray a new beer anytime he’s empty with the promptness of someone who will be hit if he doesn’t.

There’s plenty of sexiness peppered throughout. Leather chaps worn by Skarsgard and Melling, the two of them wrestling in a river with a retinue of other leather daddies and their subs, plenty of shots of either or both of their butts. If one isn’t expecting full frontal male nudity, or whips and leather, and at least one reference to a butt plug, the cuteness you can find throughout may not balance out in the end. It is explicit in its portrayal, but even when doing so in as nasty ways as one might expect from the subject matter, the little smile on Colin’s face whenever he feels chosen is enough to melt even the toughest of dom hearts.

As much as Colin enjoys the dynamics of their relationship it becomes apparent that he wants more. That perhaps he never knew exactly what he wanted, and while this was a piece of it, there are other pieces still missing. It’s the journey of self discovery, and the inclusion of his family in that journey that makes this movie as interesting as it is. It uses kink to tell a story of queerness, of trust, of how we never really know our partners as deep as any of us would like.

4/5