If you’re annoying like me, you may be familiar with the phrase: he has a sadness in his eyes you only see in Eastern European gay porn. Ladies and gentlemen, we have found the porn in question. Alexander Skarsgård and Harry Melling have delivered to us the most heartfelt BDSM movie we could have hoped for: Pillion.

I went to the screening of Pillion at the end of a period dubbed by my roommate and I as ‘Freak Week’. We went to The Dare’s ‘Freakquencies’ DJ set, I saw Blue Velvet on Valentines Day, rewatched Steven Shainberg’s Secretary, and went to the Ethel Cain concert. This film was undoubtedly freaked out, but I wasn’t expecting it to be so sweet and so charming.

I’m so glad that we’re in an age where the BBC funds films about gay BDSM subculture. Not only is it a positive sign for queer media, sex-positivity blah blah blah, but it also means that the BBC’s prime demographics are entering the preview screening of Pillion, peering over their spectacles. I jest, but Alexander Skarsgård’s Primark trash alley dick-skin reveal got some gasps early on. Although I couldn’t see in the dark, I assume that hands were clasped around pearls at some point.

Pillion follows Colin—a young, awkward fourth of his dad’s barbershop quartet, and Ray—an impossibly handsome motorcycle rider with an aptitude for weaponised incompetence and leather jumpsuits. Together, the two embark on an experiment in devotion that brings Colin into an unfamiliar world.

Harry Melling nailed the awkwardness is this role. He is certainly meek, yet he possesses an innate agency in his submission that quells audience concerns about significant power imbalance outside of the bedroom. He ends the film clouded by hopeful melancholy, a man who has found himself. Ray was a vessel for this discovery.

Colin’s relationship with his parents and the level at which it occupies his life is forced into flux throughout the film as a further symbol of coming of age. His parents are desperate to set him up with someone, to foster an environment of acceptance and love, but Colin finds the boundaries of their comfort zone when it comes to this acceptance. His mother can accept that he is gay, but when he enters this taboo, non-normative style of relationship with Ray, she is unnerved. An uncomfortable family dinner with Ray and Colin’s family illustrates this, ending with Colin’s mother calling Ray a cunt.

In the final stages of cancer, Colin’s mother is desperate to see her son come out of his shell, to find happiness, and the tension she experiences in accepting a ‘abnormal’ life for her son is heartbreaking, particularly for Colin as he centres family so completely in his life.

Following his mother's death, Colin’s relationship with his father continued to be supportive and tender. When Ray disappears after the couple’s most vulnerable moment, Colin retreats to the love and support of his father, but with a newfound agency that is palpable in their interaction. He feels like an adult in a way that was absent at the beginning of the film, and his father respects this. Besides, I think if every father was willing to drive their heartbroken son around to various BDSM biker meeting spots in search of his dom like a lost puppy, maybe the world would be a better place.

Pillion was an emotionally bare and tender cherry on top of my ‘Freak Week’. We as an audience watch a man meet the boy, get the boy, and lose the boy, all the while getting to know his own heart. It was never really about Alexander Skarsgård.