Colin is a shy, floppy-haired, crooked-toothed, young gay man who is browbeaten by the public from the beginning to the end of every single, degrading shift he works as a parking attendant. After his striped-jacket-wearing, undoubtedly corny barbershop quartet wraps up their slot at the local pub on Christmas Eve, he meets Ray—“he really is impossibly handsome”—an older, leather-clad biker on a strict low-carb diet, and embarks on the sexual adventure of his life, starting with a hot hookup outside a Primark the following afternoon, shortly after a traditional Christmas dinner with his parents. “What am I going to do with you,” Ray says, oozing with sensuality. “Whatever you want, really,” whispers Colin.
Part way through the film, Colin buzz-cuts his hair to a style more popular with his new crop of biker friends. His mum doesn’t approve, “Your hair was your best feature,” she says. “Ray likes it like this,” Colin replies, to which Mum flashes back, “Is Ray a hairdresser?” But Colin’s dad does not share his wife’s contemptuous judgment of Ray; “He is very good looking,” he says, approvingly, after glimpsing him briefly at the front door. And later, when there is some awkwardness over Ray’s unwillingness to come round for dinner, Dad diffuses the situation (at least for the audience, who laughed appreciatively); “Your mum used to parade me round town like a prize cow,” he says.
An open-minded cinema goer will be mesmerised by the filmmakers’ carefully observed transformation of Colin as he is inducted into a particular subset of gay life. In fact, “Pillion” (Warner Bros), showing now at the Montrose Playhouse, dispenses with narrow-minded prejudice altogether and jumps headlong into touting the various joys of life—sexual, fraternal, and otherwise—as a part of this necessarily private community.
Colin, played by Harry Melling, is an adapter and an explorer; a hungry, dizzy, creative force inside him is unleashed. He writes bawdy love poems packed with double meanings and references to domination while alone in the parking-attendants’ changing rooms: “I crave your command from morning to night.” “Next to you I’m nothing,/I’m yours all the same.” “I’ll take it all the way,/For you are my king.”
Surrounded by the group of gay bikers, Colin feels at ease; they take him for granted and don’t judge him and Colin does not look startled at the occasions to which he is brought along. But around Ray, played by Alexander Skarsgård, Colin is rather nervous. He paces like a teen-ager about to ask his mother to stay out late on a school night, rehearsing the order of the words in his head before preceding his actual question with a preamble; “Um…Could I ask you something?” He goes on to request a day off from his duties as the pillion (a “pillion” is “a motorcycle or bicycle saddle for a passenger,” according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary), “It could be nice,” he suggests, “it could be fun. For both of us.” “No,” says Ray, “No?” “No.” “Fair enough.”
Ray occasionally acknowledges Colin’s trepidation; “Do you wanna say something?” he asks. “No.” “Sure?” “No.” But then Colin changes his mind and asks Ray if he will come for dinner with his mum and stepfather. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.” “Okay.” When Ray eventually agrees to the dinner (roast chicken with painstakingly prepared gravy), Mum’s pent-up resentment is unleashed; “I’m not sure I like the way you talk to my son,” she says to Ray. “It’s fine. It’s not for you to like,” Ray replies. “You sound a little ignorant.”
Colin believes that Ray is a great catch and responds to his exacting demands accordingly—wearing a padlock-and-chain necklace, custom-made leathers, and open-bottomed leotards which expose his buttocks. “If you’re quiet you can sleep on the rug,”—meaning on the floor at the end of the bed—Ray tells Colin on their first night cohabiting, “if not you should go in the hallway.” Ray polishes his motorbike straight after their clock-radio alarm goes off in the mornings; Colin cooks and lifts a plastic laundry basket around. Ray is certainly not grateful—but he’s not precisely ungrateful either; he has perfected a studied, dispassionate assumption that Colin will simply do as he is told. One night, after purposely burning his own hand on a hot pan handle while cooking, Colin asks, “You know I love you, right?” Ray demurs. “That’s not what this is Colin,” he says. “That’s not the point.” Ray is a veteran reader of thick paperbacks—he lies alone on the sofa engrossed before determining when the light will be snapped off for bed—but the bookshelves behind him are discordantly empty.
The filmmakers make effective use of the contrasting reactions to Ray in Colin’s parents to hold the spellbound audience to account from the start. Mum is the natural stand-in for the audience as we grapple with the unfolding film—rushing headlong into reacting, protecting, and, especially, judging. She is a totally sympathetic character, not least because she is dying of cancer. Dad tells us to hold on and let the relationship/film play out. Perhaps, like us, he senses that sooner or later the partnership between the two men will grow stale and that his son will not be the one who determines when that moment arrives. “Pillion” is a remarkably perceptive—and also remarkably explicit—film which will remain cemented to audiences for a long time.
One dramatic close-up shot of Colin’s face, stationary at a red stop-sign on a dual carriageway while biking in just a T-shirt and underpants, captures his sudden acknowledgement of the life-threatening danger into which he has placed himself. The next morning, finding him asleep outside, head resting on a concrete step leading up to the first floor, Ray finally agrees to the proposal for a day off. Even then, Colin wants to please Ray—he tries to get Ray to choose what they will both do—but Ray is insistent; “You decide, it’s your day off.” “We could go for a bike somewhere, maybe?” Colin says. “No biking today,” Ray says, smiling.
Adam Poole
12th December 2025
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