Editor’s Word: This assessment was initially revealed in the course of the 2026 Cannes Movie Competition. A24 releases “Pillion” in theaters Friday, February 6, 2026, following a qualifying Oscar run in fall 2025.
Dick-sucking, boot-licking, and ball-gagging are de rigueur for a film like author/director Harry Lighton’s wildly graphic and unusually shifting BDSM romance, “Pillion.” However for a British queer movie that places the particulars of a homosexual dominant-submissive affair (or association, higher but) up entrance and up shut, actors Alexander Skarsgård and Harry Melling discover the candy heart of a narrative marked by clamps, cages, and assless unitards. Little question comparisons will come up to a different A24 film, “Babygirl,” which final yr put Nicole Kidman on all fours, crying out to Harris Dickinson that “I’m gonna pee!” when truly she was simply having an orgasm with one other individual for the primary time.
Lighton, adapting Adam Mars-Jones’ e-book “Field Hill,” actually does take us there within the pleasant “Pillion,” with Skarsgård getting extra emotionally bare than ever and nearly bodily greater than he ever obtained as Eric Northman on TV’s “True Blood.” However not with out, at first, this leather-clad biker, who seeks a submissive with seemingly disinterested vibes, radiating aloof power when he first meets barbershop quartet singer Colin (Melling, in a really particular and great breakout efficiency). A parking storage attendant by day and dandied-up singer by evening who’s only a bit too previous to nonetheless be dwelling along with his mother and father — although his mum (Lesley Sharp) is dying of most cancers, which partly retains him house — Colin isn’t a lot on the lookout for love or companionship or intercourse as a lot as he lastly occurs to fall into it when on Christmas Eve he’s requested for a date, of kinds, by Ray (Skarsgård, who seems and sounds an increasing number of like his father with every day).
Ray is an enigma and a thriller, a person who zips into city on a bike like a phantom and will simply as simply evaporate at any minute. He’s under no circumstances giving of emotion towards Colin as their courtship — once more, if we are able to name it that — turns right into a critical however by no means sinister sport of domination and submission. When Ray finally brings Colin again to his ascetically composed condo, he refuses to let Colin hold up his coat. He refuses Colin to have a lot volition in any respect. Ray additionally has a tattoo in the course of his chest, inked with the names “Ellen Wendy Rosie” for causes by no means defined however all of the extra so as to add to his impenetrable attract.
It’s penetrating Colin — bodily, psychically — that he finally will get round to after some toying and coying. He received’t let Colin sleep subsequent to him, conserving him on the ground like a canine on the foot of the mattress. Right here’s the form of man for whom Karl Ove Knausgård ‘s “My Battle” is gentle bedtime studying. Colin’s mom is shocked when Ray makes him purchase the groceries and cook dinner his personal birthday dinner. “You couldn’t upset me for those who tried,” Ray, ever the implacable and beautiful dominator, tells Colin at one level.
What makes “Pillion” so thrustingly good is how a lot the film teases and tantalizes us, getting off on withholding, till lastly unleashing in all its graphicness as soon as Colin is face down, plunging his mouth on Ray’s fairly giant, pierced cock, plunging ever deeper into Ray’s expansive kinky social world. Scissor Sisters lead Jake Shears makes his appearing entrance as one of many submissives orbiting Ray — and he finally ends up one of many stars of a very popular group intercourse scene splayed out over a picnic desk, through which Ray fucks Colin head to head, eyes locked on eyes, for the primary time.
It warms the cockles of my coronary heart nonetheless to consider Colin, having shaved his head and completely turned himself over to acts of devotion and in service of his grasp, sporting a locked chain round his neck, with Ray sporting the important thing round his personal. “Subsequent to you, I’m nothing. Once I’m yours, I’m the identical,” Colin tells Ray, which sounds just like the debased line of somebody being desperately exploited by a accomplice.
However Colin says it with the cadence of affection, which his mom in her dying days merely can not perceive. Colin willingly places himself in an abject place as a result of what’s occurring between him and Ray is love, for him not less than, even when that model of affection doesn’t comfortably conform to our understanding of what love is meant to be, a system of back-and-forth move in mutual instructions. Colin craves Ray’s command, and Ray can be mendacity if he stated he wasn’t feeling emotions about his boytoy, too.
Which is when “Pillion” takes an sudden route, Colin lastly assuming extra management over the connection and turning into the emotional energy backside he was destined to be of their dynamic. What makes “Pillion” work so effectively is that the movie lastly does give strategy to an enormous emotional launch after a lot cockteasing and edging of the viewers and of Colin.
Cinematographer Nick Morris has a watch for each sweaty intimacy in its hottest moments and the pooling reserves of need and reined-in emotion that require a sure detachment. Till we’re snapped again into what’s in the end a deeply shifting love story, one the place we turn out to be the submissives to Lighton’s unusual, lovely, and horny imaginative and prescient. It additionally by no means hurts to be anchored by two actors who’re completely sport and dedicated to that imaginative and prescient, and prepared to go there, chains, gags, assless chaps and all.
Grade: A-
“Pillion” premiered on the 2025 Cannes Movie Competition. A24 releases the movie in 2026.
Need to keep updated on IndieWire’s movie evaluations and demanding ideas? Subscribe right here to our newly launched e-newsletter, In Assessment by David Ehrlich, through which our Chief Movie Critic and Head Evaluations Editor rounds up the most effective new evaluations and streaming picks together with some unique musings — all solely out there to subscribers.