Pillion

"Do you give?" The movie version of Box Hill. Stars Harry Melling as the young protogonist Colin, and Alexander Skarsgård as the cool hot biker Ray. I’ll try not to compare this to the book too much because the two aren’t that similar; it’s set in the modern day as opposed to the 70s, the characters are older and Ray doesn’t die in the end. It’s still quite a bleak film but the reworking of it gives it a glimmer of hope. And that glimmer of hope does work. We see Colin begin to find his own sense of self worth without losing what he originally liked about the BDSM relationship he was in. It made me squirm in my seat several times. Not so much at the kinkiness, but Melling’s earnestness and vulnerability crossed with the quiet domineering Skarsgård puts the whole thing under such tension, even as the dynamic begins to shift. I think it’s a shame it wasn’t set in the 70s but Lighton finds other ways to make it work, and finds new angles and themes within the story that we didn’t really…