After giving a handsome biker (Alexander Skarsgård) a blow job in an alley, shy Colin (Harry Melling) embarks on a BDSM relationship with him; his parents struggle to understand the appeal.

The director’s debut is a dive into a gay subculture, carefully researched by Harry Lighton and the actors. Excellent performances by the two leads in a relationship that tests limits and reflects what both need at that particular moment in their lives; Douglas Hodge and Lesley Sharp are also very good as Colin’s folks.

It’s a drama-comedy about consent and self-respect, a lesson to be learned for a virgin, not easily digested for all audiences.

2025-U.K.-Ireland. 107 min. Written and directed by Harry Lighton. Novel: Adam Mars-Jones (”Box Hill”). Cast: Harry Melling (Colin), Alexander Skarsgård (Ray), Douglas Hodge (Pete), Lesley Sharp (Peggy), Jake Shears, Mat Hill. 

Trivia: Co-executive produced by Skarsgård.

Last word: “The book was sent to me by someone called Eva Yates, she’s the head of film at BBC and was an executive on the project. So she sent me the book and said ‘I think you’ll find this interesting.’ I found the tonal cocktail of it very intriguing, it kind of gives you a bit of tonal whiplash — you go from laughing to being shocked or outraged or turned on from sentence to sentence. And I thought was a really interesting challenge, to see if a film could house that kind of tonal combination. Very quickly after reading it actually, I was like, ‘Okay, this is the project.’ And then it took a long, long time to arrive at how that tonal combination could work in a film.” (Lighton, The Black List)