pillion

Pillion (2025)
Directed by Harry Lighton

For it is simply a miracle of this world that someone like _________ ever enters it.

Fill in the blank however you’d like, as there are numerous people that could fit within the space provided. We all probably have someone in mind. For Colin (Harry Melling) he could not have imagined a man like Ray (Alexander Skarsgård) entering his life. Living in a suburb of London with his father and ailing mother, Colin does not lead a quintessentially exciting life. He’s a member of a barbershop quartet that performs at the local pub, where onlookers barely pay attention. He works a menial job as a parking attendant, giving tickets to violators, and often has to contend with being berated. At the start of Harry Lighton’s debut feature, we observe Colin in awe of a passing motorcyclist. Donning all the appropriate armored motorcycle leather one associates with the BDSM scene and standing at a towering 6’4”, Ray draws plenty of attention by just remaining upright. Colin observes the coterie of other pierced and leather-clad motorcycle gays that take over the bar; he desperately wants part of that community. And when he gets Ray’s phone number, with a brief encounter scheduled on Christmas Day, he leaps at the opportunity.

Lonely people will find themselves placed in the most uncompromising, painfully absurd positions in order to stave off feeling the emptiness inside of them. I know this because I’ve been there, numerous times throughout my life. Similarly, as a lonely person, I’ve identified other lonely people and have exploited that sadness within them, propping myself up and boosting my self-confidence and worth as a result. Not my finest hour. Colin, without question, adheres to Ray’s demands. From preparing meals for him to sleeping on the floor of Ray’s bed, Colin wears a chain and lock around his neck with Ray wearing the key; the relationship, if you were to call it that, is one rooted in subservience and dominance. There’s a ruthlessness to Ray’s treatment of Colin, wherein Colin’s mother questions the relationship. Dying of cancer, her hope is to see her son with someone that makes him happy. Yet there are moments where Ray will celebrate Colin, and even open up to him in his own way. But it’s not what the relationship is intended to be, at least not to Ray.

Something akin to post-nut clarity, there’s a moment late into the film where Ray and Colin kiss. It’s on a day where Colin is afforded the luxury of a quasi-traditional, normative date involving coffee and a movie. It’s the happiest either are in the film, and at the same time, for Ray, it’s the moment of truth. And it’s just that he’s not intended to be in a relationship like this. Tattooed on his chest are the names of women: Ellen, Wendy, and Rose. We don’t know why. We don’t really know anything about this man who best describes himself to others as “discreet”. Colin’s mother wonders if he has a family outside of this one. The answers aren’t there because Ray disappears, leaving Colin to pick himself up after the wreckage.

Clearly I saw a lot of myself in both of these characters. I detested my past’s exploitive nature while realizing how far the pendulum can swing in my ineffectuality when confronted with intense solitude. We can all be lonely creatures, spinning our wheels, desperate to fill a void in ourselves that so often requires so much from others. Pillion understands the harmony that happens when balancing oneself as a passenger on a motorcycle. There’s a lot of control involved, and going it alone is so often easier. But it’s that solitude that breeds a crushing loneliness that can make the void all the more unbearable. We all must learn how to balance, careening past the city lights at intense speeds, before coming to our intended destination, with or without the blank space filled in our mind.