By Nicole Veneto

The intention isn’t to provoke, eroticize, or sexually titillate. Devoid of the kinds of melodramatics that play into the fujoshi fantasy that’s all the rage right now, “Pillion” is a film about fetishes that never fetishizes its subject matter to placate an outsider’s gaze.

Pillion, directed by Harry Lighton. Screening at Coolidge Corner Theater, Somerville Theatre, Kendall Square Cinema, and AMC Boston Common 19.

Colin (Harry Melling) will follow Ray (Alexander Skarsgård) wherever he may go (including the back alley of a Primark). Photo: A24

Future historians will look back on 2025 as the year the fujoshi went mainstream, or rather, emerged as a lucrative marketing demographic. They’ll likely owe this development to the success of the Canadian import Heated Rivalry, a show I have not watched despite being the target audience of “rotten girls” aged 18-35 who have, at one time or another, written and/or read slashfic of their favorite fictional male characters having filthy (and often unrealistic) sex together. The sudden cultural dominance of the fujoshi has been years in the making, a tradition carried on through multiple generations of fangirls after someone picked up on the sexual tension between Kirk and Spock. It’s also endured plenty of (valid) criticism from gay men who feel the fujoshi gaze is an inherently fetishistic one — a self-indulgent bit of sexually sublimated female fantasy divorced from lived experience or knowledge of how sex between two men works.

Despite benefitting from a post-Heated Rivalry viewing public, Pillion is far more interested in the situational absurdities and transformative potential of a dom/sub relationship than it is in offering up the kind of sweaty, homosexual smut that’s attracting women in droves. That being said, the basic plot of Harry Lighton’s debut feature will ring familiar to anyone who has fallen asleep scrolling through AO3: a shy young man comes under the thrall of a handsome but emotionally distant dom of achingly few words. Colin (Harry Melling) is our submissive, a parking attendant by day and barbershop crooner by night with an unrealized “aptitude for devotion” unlocked the moment leather daddy Ray (Alexander Skarsgård) slides him a time and place to meet across the counter at the local pub.

The ensuing alleyway hook-up is an awkward encounter, but gives the sexually inexperienced Colin a taste for more than just Ray’s cock and boot. Soon enough, Colin’s buying butt plugs and riding pillion on Ray’s motorbike with a shaved head and a padlock chain around his neck. Their relationship, however, is more of an undernegotiated arrangement, lacking the sort of emotional intimacy Colin clearly craves but can’t bring himself to demand. He’s happy to cook, clean, and sleep on Ray’s floor (the bed is reserved for Ray’s beloved Rottweiler), though Colin’s parents (Douglas Hodge and Lesley Sharp) question whether his new boyfriend truly has his best interests at heart. Love is tertiary to the enigmatic Ray, who shows what could be considered affection in the form of one-word commands and fucking Colin face-to-face while he’s hog-tied to a picnic table. This push-pull between Colin’s emotional needs and Ray’s baser desires asks what a successful relationship looks like: is it a conventional happily ever after, or is the journey towards self-discovery the point?

Hardly fujoshi-bait or any hardcore gay pornography, Pillion is a British comedy of manners in the guise of a Tom of Finland illustration. It’s as buoyant a film about BDSM can be, closer in proximity to Secretary than Babygirl. Lighton makes several adaptational changes to Adam Mars-Jones’ novella Box Hill, moving the time period up from the 1970s to the present day (thus removing the dread of the oncoming AIDS crisis). He also gives Colin a supportive family (Sharp, as his cancer-stricken but cheerful mother, runs away with every scene she’s in). Rather than defanging the source material, Lighton’s changes shift the tone from psychodrama towards wry romcom, like if Bill Forsyth had directed The Duke of Burgundy. The intention isn’t to provoke, eroticize, or sexually titillate. Devoid of the kinds of melodramatics that play into the fujoshi fantasy that’s all the rage right now, Pillion is a film about fetishes that never fetishizes its subject matter to placate an outsider’s gaze.

Yet I can’t help but wonder what this movie would be like if it was directed by a natural-born kinkster. Lighton, a gay man (and heir to the Lighton baronetcy might I add), does an admirable job familiarizing himself with the subculture, even recruiting members of the Gay Bikers Motorcycle Club to play extras in Ray’s gang and advise the production; he talked at length about the extent of his research process and bringing the BDSM community into the fold while accepting his Breakthrough Award at the Coolidge Corner Theatre. Lighton brings a deft touch to the material, opting for a fashionably minimalist aesthetic with tasteful invocations of Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising — sans the Nazism, of course. It all makes for a bold debut, if at times too spartan to incorporate the fluid pleasures and sexual transgressions certified pervert directors like Bruce LaBruce indulge in. This is mostly a matter of personal taste, admittedly one informed by my own general preference for filmmakers who put their fetishes onscreen.

Where Pillion undoubtedly succeeds is on the strength of its leads. Skarsgård — pulling double duty as executive producer — is perfectly cast, continuing a streak of sexually daring roles that began with True Blood and continued through being dog-walked in Infinity Pool. (Do yourself a favor and check his IMDB page, you’ll thank me.) As emotionally withholding as Ray is, you understand completely why someone like Colin would drop everything for a six-foot-four slice of Nordic perfection. Pillion’s most devastating image comes when Ray finally lets the mask slip, a whole word of emotion playing out on Skarsgård’s face, at once emotionally intuitive and cryptically heartbreaking. But Pillion simply wouldn’t work without Harry Melling, who’s proven to be the true acting talent to emerge from the Harry Potter movies. I hesitate to call any role “brave,” yet Melling’s leading turn requires a level of physical and emotional vulnerability — in addition to comedic timing — that’s as demanding as a bossy dom. Melling effortlessly rises to the challenge, it’s a wholly naturalistic performance, fully lived in and realized. He’s the heart and soul of the movie.

Pillion’s queer bona fides are indisputable. It’s a film made by a gay man, about gay men, and largely for gay men. Yet the audience makeup at my particular screening was curiously diverse: heavily pierced gay men in leather, visibly queer people of all gender identities and sexual persuasions, older men and women giving off blue-state liberal “proud ally” vibes, and yes, fujoshis. (I immediately recognized the happy squeals coming from the young woman sitting next to me, having made the exact same noises in the same movie theater during Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie.) The only audience Pillion won’t appeal to are families — campsite ass-eating is heartwarming but hardly age-appropriate — and your garden variety homophobes, who are more than welcome to watch Melania Trump pick out dresses for two hours. Even if Pillion can’t quite bring itself to sweat like Cruising or fuck like Querelle, you’d be hard pressed to find any movie that makes assless wrestling a crowd-pleasing moment.

Nicole Veneto is a locally revered abject woman and acclaimed millennial hag with an MA in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Brandeis University, where she concentrated on feminist media studies. Her writing has been featured in MAI Feminism & Visual Culture, Film Matters Magazine, and Boston University’s Hoochie Reader. She’s the co-host of the podcast Marvelous! Or, the Death of Cinema and a features programmer for the Boston Underground Film Festival. You can follow her on Letterboxd, Substack, and her podcast on Twitter @MarvelousDeath.