Pillion

 I went to see Pillion.  It was released yesterday and the only day I could find an early showing so I went.  (I normally like to avoid Friday afternoons at the cinema because it is a busier day than the rest of the week with people wanting to see first day releases). 

It is a bondage and submission movie with 18 rating and warning about sex and nudity.   I knew from the trailer that I had seen that it was about a strong handsome looking biker who is attracted to a puny male mummy's kind of boy.  It is certainly that and full on with the bondage and submission, male bikers and bare bottoms but I was unaware of most of this from the trailer.  The sex is pretty explicit.

It is good thanks to the acting skills of the two leads.  The strong handsome guy, Alexander Skarsgard, plays Ray,  and Harry Melling is Colin, the mummy's boy.   Both terrific in their roles.   It could have been an embarrassing  failure as a film but it wasn't.  It is both poignant and uncomfortable at the same time when  on the surface it looks and leans towards being cruel but Colin is in full agreement with his submissive role and being dominated by Ray and learning as he went along in a kind of sweet, naive way of discovery and tells his mum to shut up when she questioned it.  Colin's mum didn't think so and made it perfectly clear to Ray over dinner one evening, the only time when Ray was persuaded to go to dinner.  It was one of the best lines in the movie and I think I may have said out loud, yes,  when she expressed herself to Ray in no uncertain terms as to what she thought of Ray's treatment of her son.   (Colin  had some very good lines when he was alone with Ray so it wasn't really the best line in the film but it was at that point).  

I didn't find myself leaning towards either Colin or Ray, Colin was free to walk away at any time,  and the film led me in that it was non-judgmental in all respects although at times excrutiatingly painful both literally (I imagine) and metaphorically.    Throw into it unexotic British folk and locations and you get a bit of comedy in the pot.  

I imagine there will be quite a lot said about it and mixed reactions.