Wryly funny and playfully provocative kinky gay love story starring a very affecting Harry Melling as the shy, mild-mannered Colin. He’s by day a traffic warden in the outer borough of London. He also sings acapella with his dad in a barbershop quartet at a local pub. One night he sees this studly, leather-clad motorcyclist Ray (Alexander Skarsgard) who walks up next to him at the bar and indicates that Colin should pay for his chips, which he obediently (and wordlessly) does. That’s when he is given a card with a time and place to meet on Christmas night.
Their assignation, in an alley, is brief and sexually degrading, but both seem quite satisfied by it. Ray immediately senses that Colin has “an aptitude for devotion,” which he takes full advantage of at his home- forcing Colin to cook, clean and then sleep on a rug in front of his bed at night. He even makes Colin shave his curly locks, which dismays his mother (dying of cancer) who considered this, “his best feature.” There is sex- usually following a sweaty, brutal wrestling bout where Collin wears an assless singlet, but even after that Colin is asked to buy a butt plug because he is too tight.
There is a great sequence where Colin and Ray head to the woods for an orgiastic picnic with a group of like-minded gay leather bikers and Colin meets another “sub” (played by the wonderful Jake Shears). There in the forest he has a confusing and sexually exciting encounter with Ray while bent nude over a table along with other sub partners.
But the power dynamic in these kind of relationships is always so unequal, and for a novice like Colin, the rules and regulations begin to fray on him. What’s great about Skarsgard is that while his character is impossible to read at first, later in the movie when he tries to make some concessions to Colin you really feel his vulnerability and fear also.
Director Harry Lighton plays this bondage & discipline bromance with a light touch at first but hits all the right notes emotionally later on in the film when things get hopelessly serious.