Alexander Skarsgard and Harry Melling play unlikely lovers in this sweet and extremely revealing first time drama from Harry Lighton, adapted from Adam Mars-Jones’ Box HillHere 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 – like a cross between Alan Bennett and Tom of Finland with perhaps a tiny smidgen of what could be called a BDSM Wallace and Gromit. It’s basically what Fifty Shades of Grey should have been. Pillion is adapted from the 2020 novel Box Hill by Adam Mars-Jones: a shy traffic enforcement officer falls for the ultimate dominant alpha male – an impossibly handsome, strong, emotionally impassive biker who casually demands complete domestic obedience in exchange for the privilege of being reamed with athletic vigour and thrilling lack of sensitivity, often in a specially modified wrestling outfit. Harry Melling, who becomes more impressive with every screen outing, plays Colin, a sweet, shy guy who lives at home with his mum and dad, Pete (Douglas Hodge) and Peggy (Lesley Sharp) who is in the final stages of cancer and who is always tenderly trying to set him up with dates. Heartbreakingly, Colin sings with his dad’s cheesy close-harmony barbershop quartet every Sunday in the pub in boaters and bow-ties.It is here that he somehow catches the imperious gaze of leather-clad Ray (played with kingly and sexy entitlement by Alexander Skarsgard) who invites or in fact orders Colin to meet him behind Primark at 5pm for a blowjob. Soon Ray is requi