"Some filmmakers use their early work to process their formative experiences. Harry Lighton took the opposite tack: with his first short films, he was exploring on screen what he hadn't yet been brave enough to try in real life. "On some level, I began making films because I wanted to explore my own sexuality," the 33-year-old writer-director tells me. "In my early twenties, I would essentially soft-launch my sexuality [through] my shorts, and then go and do it myself.""
"Pillion follows the salty-sweet relationship that forms between Colin (Harry Melling), a mild mannered traffic warden, and Ray (Alexander Skarsgård), a strapping dom biker who's looking for a sub, and reckons the inexperienced but eager-to-please Colin might fit the bill. Few among us would turn down a chance to wrestle in spandex with someone who looks like Skarsgård, but many might baulk at Ray's other kinks, which include turning Colin into a domestic servant and forcing him to sleep alone on the bedroom floor."
Harry Lighton used his early short films to experiment with experiences he had not tried in real life, effectively soft-launching his sexuality on screen. His debut feature Pillion adapts Adam Mars-Jones's novel Box Hill and centers on Colin, a mild-mannered traffic warden, and Ray, a dom biker seeking a submissive. The relationship explores BDSM dynamics including domestic servitude and enforced sleeping arrangements, with Colin demonstrating an aptitude for devotion. Pillion balances rom-com rhythms with explicit kink, deliberately maintaining ambiguity about whether Colin's increasing humiliation should be celebrated or condemned. Audience reactions to that ambiguity vary widely.
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