Pillion (2025) Review: An Honest Look at Power, Desire, and BDSM on Screen
A trauma-informed, kink-literate analysis of a high-protocol D/s relationship… and why Pillion succeeds where most BDSM films fail.
This review contains no plot spoilers.
When I first heard about Pillion, it was under the backdrop of a request to be on a panel as a BDSM expert for an A24 film pre-screening event.
As someone who reputably knows nothing about celebrities or Hollywood, my brain assumed this was a low-budget indie screening in the back room of a Brooklyn bar.
Not a nationwide release. Not an event in collaboration with Dipsea.
And def not Alexander Skarsgård.
Shows you what I know 🤣
They ended up going with an internal Dipsea kinkster for the panel moderator, but I still got my kinky ass into the AMC at Lincoln Center — wearing the ultimate flags of all flags: a black bandana on the left and a brass key around my neck (IYKYK).
Panel discussion with: Alexander Skarsgard, Harry Melling, Harry Lighton, and Dipsea - photo’d left to right.
While the rest of the theater was there to ogle Skarsgård (yes, he was there in the flesh and I was in the second row), I was there to see if, finally, someone told the truth about kinky love.
Which meant I was skeptical as hell.
Recent attempts at kink on screen have been… rough 😖
Bonded was wildly inaccurate (A dominatrix in a collar is still unforgivable.)
Fifty Shades was the ultimate snooze fest but still managed to skip the boring-but-critical on-ramp and jumped straight to spectacle — leaving a character crying without any real understanding of why.
The bar is so low for kink on screen, it’s basically being held in place by chewed up bubble gum on filthy pavement.
So yes, I was clenching.
What Pillion Is (and Isn’t)
Pillion is a contemporary romantic drama centered on a gay male couple entering a high-protocol, lifestyle BDSM dynamic.
The film tracks the evolution of that relationship inside a wider kink community — power, rules, ritual, rupture, repair, and consequence — without pretending any of it is clean or aspirational.
This is not an instructional film. It is not best-in-class power exchange.
And thank God for that.
You can take classes for best practices.
What Pillion does instead is show what actually happens when people jump into power dynamics before they have the internal capacity to hold them.
This is exactly the question I explore in Episode 6 of Gutter Wisdom: Are You Tall Enough to Ride? — a breakdown of capacity checks required before entering high-stakes intimacy or power dynamics.
Who This Film Is For
Pillion will likely land well if you’re someone who:
Is curious about BDSM or power exchange as lived reality, not fantasy cosplay
Understands that desire doesn’t automatically equal readiness
Is interested in how power, attachment, and fantasy collide in relationships
Can tolerate nuance, discomfort, and unresolved tension without needing a moral bow tied on top
Wants to see kink portrayed as relationally complex, not instructional or aspirational
This film respects the intelligence of the viewer.
It assumes you can hold ambiguity.
Who This Film Is Not For
This film may not be for you if you’re looking for:
A “how-to” guide to BDSM or kink education
A polished representation of best-practice power exchange
A redemptive arc where everyone behaves well and learns the lesson on time
Erotic content designed primarily for arousal
Clear heroes, villains, or moral instruction
Pillion doesn’t teach technique.
It shows consequence.
Why This Movie Works
The film doesn’t sanitize the mess 🫣
It shows:
How desperation to be chosen distorts consent
How unmet needs mutate into control or tantrums
How fantasy collapses under real relational pressure
How clarity often arrives after the damage, not before
I talk more about how and where to build these skills safely in Episode 7: Where to Practice Before the Stakes Are High, because throwing yourself into the deep end is not the same thing as building capacity.
There are scenes of high-protocol D/s inside a community context… like slaves in kitchen serving their owners, collars worn without apology, and bodies arranged as a buffet platter for the taking 🤤
None of it is shot for shock value nor is it explained away.
It’s just there.
And that’s why it works.
People will argue that Pillion “isn’t real BDSM.”
SCURR. I disagree.
If I had to choose one word for this film, it would be honest.
Honest about how far people will contort themselves to belong.
Honest about how power exposes fractures instead of fixing them.
Honest about how desire doesn’t absolve you of skill building.
And honest about the particular heartbreak of a first dynamic — the kind that leaves scars and permanently ruins vanilla relationships for you.
Yea… that kind of ruined 😏
What Pillion also captures quietly, and without romance, is how self-authority can destabilize a system that depends on fantasy.
When one person stops contorting, the group often doesn’t celebrate… it panics.
I speak directly to this pattern in Episode 9 of Gutter Wisdom: When Capacity Threatens Belonging — especially for people who’ve been told that leaving is a failure instead of a function of discernment.
Why This Matters (And What I’m Doing With It)
A lot of people will walk out of this movie trying to decide whether they liked it.
That’s not the interesting question.
The interesting question is:
Where did capacity fail? And where did fantasy outrun skill?
Over the next few weeks on Gutter Wisdom, I’m going to be using Pillion as a case study — not to critique kink technique, but to audit power literacy.
Think Harvard Business Review, but for intimacy and power.
Bring a notebook; get your master’s degree.
Before You Watch (or Re-Watch)
If you want a clean snapshot of how your system handles pressure, power, and desire, start here:
Take the Engineering Hotness Quiz at PriestessFrancesca.com/Quiz
It’s free, it’s fast, it’s filthy…
It’ll give you your baseline and the next step to master to become a relationship badass… before you’re about to walk into a back alley with a total smoke show to get railed 😈
Topics: BDSM Film, kink in cinema, power exchange relationship