Embracing its risqué subject matter, Harry Lighton’s Pillon is one of the most honestly romantic films to have graced the screen in the last decade. This queer drama deals takes place within the gay biker subculture, the relationship at its center based on a dominant/submissive dynamic, which will likely be a hard sell to middle America. Lighton and the star of the film, Harry Melling, were in Chicago recently to promote the British production.
“It’s not just a film about hard-core BDSM; there is humor in it and sweetness in it and Christmas in it,” Lighton said. “All these things were deliberately crafted to make it inviting, but still specific.” Based on the novel Box Hill by Adam Mars Jones, the movie focuses on Colin (Melling), an insecure young man who begins a relationship with an enigmatic biker named Ray (Alexander Skarsgard). What he doesn’t realize is he’ll be required to take a subservient role, catering to his new partner’s every need, from housework and making his meals, while also catering to his every need behind closed doors.
Having burst on the scene as Dudley Dursley in the Harry Potter movies, Melling approached the role of Colin by contacting the Great Britian Motorcycle Club. “It’s the biggest gay bikers club in the UK,” he said. “I spent a day with them riding around. We went up to the Cambridge Pride event, and I met some of their friends. It was just a really fascinating important day in terms of starting my journey trying to work out who Colin was. They were just unbelievably generous with their time and volunteering their stories.”
Lighton accompanied Melling on the trip and gained some key insights as well. “I think one of the main things I took away from them was that they’re not just always speaking about sex,” he said, laughing. “Despite appearances, they might speak about how bad the traffic is on the M25 or speaking about the problem of, like, urban foxes encroaching on park land in London. They really are normal guys, so I wanted to make sure that the film was threaded through with a sense of that normal alongside the more extreme scenes.”
Though he says little as Colin’s love interest, Ray, actor Alexander Skarsgård cuts an imposing figure, dominating nearly every scene he’s in with stony silence and an unsettling stillness. I asked Lighton about how he and the performer approached the role and he shared that they took an unconventional approach.
“We didn’t have any conversations about what we were thinking, which is what I know surprises a lot of people, but in a way, I think that’s what allowed it to be. We decided not to give him a back story, to make sure that we kept it an open question for the audience. Of course, Alex is antiseptically beautiful, and we talked a lot about how to how to muddy up that a bit. We wanted to create a version of the bike look which felt more modern than maybe the ones which you’ve seen in the ’60s and ’70s. As far as character went, once we decided that we didn’t want to dig into the back story and that we wanted to give moments to the audience where we saw the hint of vulnerability, the rest sort of took care of itself.
Over the course of the film, Colin learns a great deal about himself, the relationship between him and Ray taking an unexpected turn in the third act, leading to a surprising conclusion. I asked Melling and Lighton what the future held for the character.
The director offered up, “As with many first loves, Colin learns self-definition. He learns actually what he wants from both sex and relationship. I’d like to think that wherever he is, he’s sort of applying his lessons from being with Ray.”
Melling ended our conversation with a rather surprising observation. “I think he’ll be more assertive in his submission,” he said of his character. “Being able to say, ‘this is how I want to be a submissive,’ not just letting someone else dictate the terms. All the submissives we spoke to say the same thing. The submissive has the power in a relationship, and I think maybe Colin has understood what that power is in his next step toward finding love.”
