Soft Power

"At the Upper West Side outpost of the Strand, the actor is a reedy presence, his small figure buried in a large North Face winter jacket and topped with a shock of curly hair. He's tracing a finger along the shelves of available fiction in search of that novel's author, Adam Mars-Jones. We check the M's and the J's but have no luck. London-born Melling isn't surprised."

"Director Harry Lighton transposed the story from the 1970s to the present, casting a hulking Alexander Skarsgård as the gorgeous and emotionally remote biker Ray, and Melling as the shy, diminutive parking attendant who submits himself to Ray. The erotic dramedy (or dom-com) is Lighton's feature debut after a well-received series of shorts. Pillion was acquired by A24 in October 2024 and made a splash at Cannes in May 2025, where it won an award for its screenplay."

Harry Melling searches the Strand for Adam Mars-Jones, the author of Box Hill. Box Hill, published in 2020, was a minor literary sensation in England and was called "the biggest small book of the year" by The Guardian; the novel depicts a violent dom-sub relationship in the 1970s. Director Harry Lighton transposed the story to the present for Pillion, casting Alexander Skarsgård as the remote biker Ray and Melling as the shy parking attendant who submits to him. A24 acquired Pillion in October 2024; the film won a screenplay prize at Cannes in May 2025 and earned multiple awards-season nominations before its wide U.S. release. The film takes a softer emotional approach than the novel, which opens with explicit sexual violence.

Read at Vulture