Colin, a timid gay man, is swept off his feet when Ray, an enigmatic and impossibly handsome biker, takes him on as his submissive in a crazy and erotic BDSM-focused relationship.
Acting
Melling's trembling vulnerability vs. Skarsgård's terrifying stillness.
Direction
Lighton balances genuine tenderness with genuinely unhinged setpieces.
Score
Jake Shears contributes to the gloriously camp soundscape.
Director
Harry Lighton
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Harry Melling lost significant weight for the role, partly to emphasize Colin's physical smallness against Skarsgård's towering frame—a visual power dynamic that required no dialogue.
The film deliberately queers the British 'kitchen sink' realist tradition, taking working-class masculine spaces (pubs, garages, motorbike culture) and flooding them with explicit homoeroticism that the genre historically suppressed.
GB
