VIFF 2025 | Alexander Skarsgård Dominates 'Pillion'

"I have an aptitude for devotion."

Vancouver International Film Festival

VIFF 2025—Alexander Skarsgård and Harry Melling star in English filmmaker Harry Lighton's explicit yet crowd-pleasing directorial debut, Pillion, based on British author Adam Mars-Jones' 2020 novel Box Hill. Framed as a stylish, BDSM-themed gay biker romance, both actors are fearless yet earnestly sweet in their tender but often graphic courtship.

Lighton expresses the ideals and extremes of homosexual sex through intense homoerotic imagery, men's bodies, leather-clad clothing, chains, and a sense of tight control. Skarsgård's sculpted physique, contrasted to Melling's meek demeanour, is used as an obvious but appealing portrait of a dominance-submissive relationship. There's a deliberately controlled dynamic of removed emotional detachment, leading to sweaty intimacy seen on screen.

We get into the mind of Melling's devoted submissive just as Skarsgård's aloof biker dom relishes his power over him. Pillion also feels particularly British in its queerness, with a lack of emotional sharing or explaining feelings, while characters keep their proper manners despite the strangeness of many situations.

It's a quiet but deeply absurdist romance about our (very) explicit wants and desires sexually, physically, and emotionally. Pillion's bizarrely sweet affection for the kinks and pleasures of its characters does not go unnoticed. Imagine the coming-of-age, "first love" tone of a classic Richard Curtis British romantic comedy, but with the graphic strictness of a queer, BDSM sub-dom relationship.

Pillion screened at the 2025 Vancouver International Film Festival as part of the Showcase series at the Rio Theatre.


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