AN OPPOSITES-ATTRACT 'DOMCOM'

"'What am I gonna do with you?' wonders Ray (Alexander Skarsgard), an unsettlingly handsome biker, to Colin (Harry Melling), the bashful young man he has just met.

- JEANNETTE CATSOULIS

Alexander Skarsgard, left, and Harry Melling in Pillion.

"Whatever you want, really," Colin replies, before being brought to his knees in happy submission. Their encounter might be the opposite of romantic — it takes place in a back alley — but for Colin it's nothing less than transformative.

Based on the 2020 novel Box Hill by Adam Mars-Jones, Pillion is essentially an opposites-attract romantic comedy with a BDSM overlay.

Colin, a parking enforcement officer in an unremarkable London suburb, is someone seemingly without agency or ambition. (When we meet him on Christmas Eve, he's on a pub date arranged by his mother.) He sings in a barbershop quartet and, at home with his parents, Pete and Peggy (Douglas Hodge and Lesley Sharp), he fondly endures their well-meaning queries about his love life. Peggy, who is terminally ill, is especially invested in finding her son a boyfriend.