The film has already received the thumbs up from critics, too.
Vanity Fair has hailed it as “a frank, kinky, utterly idiosyncratic first feature from Lighton”, while Deadline praised the “beautifully heartbreaking love story” set “against a modern world of BDSM”.
The Daily Beast described Pillion as “quite possibly the sexiest movie at Cannes this year, that’s also delightfully tender”, while The Guardian’s four-review said: “Here to prove there’s nothing gentle about true love is an intensely English story of romance, devotion and loss from first-time feature director Harry Lighton, who has created something funny and touching and alarming.”
An official synopsis for the film previously teased: “Colin, a weedy wallflower is letting life pass him by. That is until Ray, the impossibly handsome leader of a motorbike club, takes him on as his submissive.
“Ray uproots Colin from his dreary suburban life, introducing him to a community of kinky, queer bikers and taking all sorts of virginities along the way. But as Colin steps deeper into Ray’s world of rules and mysteries, he begins to question whether the life of a 24/7 submissive is for him. Has he found his calling, or simply swapped one form of suffocation for another?”
Meanwhile, later in Cannes, it looked like Alexander had taken inspiration from his character, sporting some knee-high Saint-Laurent boots on the red carpet…
