Photo Courtesy of “A Rabbit’s Foot”
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, and I mentioned to him this might be a hard sell in certain areas of this country.
“It’s not just a film about hard-core BDSM, there is humor in it and sweetness in it and Christmas in it,” he 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 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 like 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 them 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 which 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 as 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 backstory and that we wanted to give moments to the audience where we saw the hint of vulnerability, the rest kind of 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 that, “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 towards finding love.”
