Some­thing very bad hap­pened to Agnes. It’s hint­ed at in the first seg­ment of Sor­ry, Baby, when her best friend Lydie (Nao­mi Ack­ie) arrives for a vis­it, and asks Agnes (Eva Vic­tor) if she feels com­fort­able hav­ing the office of their old Eng­lish pro­fes­sor Pre­ston Deck­er (Louis Can­cel­mi). It’s fair­ly easy to infer what Lydie means by this, par­tic­u­lar­ly once they go for din­ner at the home of their for­mer class­mate Natasha (Kel­ly McCor­ma­ck) and she snark­i­ly remarks that Agnes was always ​“Decker’s favourite”. Lydie polite­ly changes the sub­ject and gives Agnes’s leg a reas­sur­ing squeeze.

There has been a del­uge of films about sex­u­al assault in the wake of MeToo, but for all the artis­tic cap­i­tal (right­ful­ly) afford­ed to sur­vivors, pre­cious lit­tle has mate­ri­al­ly changed with­in cul­ture. Some­times it feels as if there’s more resent­ment than ever towards vic­tims for dar­ing speak­ing up – it’s this real­i­ty that Eva Victor’s direc­to­r­i­al debut (which she wrote and stars in) cap­tures so well, in which a woman is sex­u­al­ly assault­ed by a man in a posi­tion of trust, and the accord­ing fall-out is the lack of fall-out. Noth­ing in the world at large changes; every­thing does in hers, revealed in non-chrono­log­i­cal order, with a chap­ter for each year fol­low­ing the assault. When she goes to see a (male) doc­tor fol­low­ing her assault, he chas­tis­es her for not going to the ER imme­di­ate­ly after­wards. He seems com­plete­ly indif­fer­ent to the trau­mat­ic inci­dent Agnes has expe­ri­enced; all Agnes and Lydie can do in response is laugh.

What else can Agnes do? The per­pe­tra­tor has already hand­ed in his notice at col­lege, and the school claim they’re unable to open a case against him as a result. Agnes doesn’t want to press charges against him because he has a child – and if she’s treat­ed like an incon­ve­nience by med­ical staff and her school, who’s to say the police would be any dif­fer­ent? So Agnes inter­nalis­es her pain. Over the course of the next four years, she lives her life in the same apart­ment she shared with Lydie dur­ing grad school, and teach­es at the same col­lege she used to attend. There’s an unspo­ken sense that Agnes can’t quite move on from the place; she sleep­i­ly haunts it, unable to find clo­sure because no one – except Lydie – under­stands or acknowl­edges what hap­pened to her.

It’s the banal­i­ty of endur­ing a sex­u­al assault that Vic­tor cap­tures so well in her film; how the trau­ma lingers long in the body, even when you keep insist­ing to every­one (includ­ing your­self) that you’re fine. When Agnes begins a ten­ta­tive romance with her sweet neigh­bour Gavin (Lucas Hedges) she doesn’t quite know how to respond to his affec­tion; when she has a pan­ic attack in her car, a gruff sand­wich shop own­er (John Car­roll Lynch) coach­es her through it and then makes her some food. These small moments of kind­ness – as well as the beau­ti­ful friend­ship between Agnes and Lydie – glim­mer like flecks of gold on the bot­tom of a murky riverbed, demon­strat­ing there is still some good in the world despite what hap­pened to her. Good that also exists in Agnes’ cat Olga, who she finds on the street as a kit­ten days after her assault, even if she even­tu­al­ly has to euthanise a mouse left in her bed.

This sur­pris­ing­ly vio­lent mer­cy killing feels like an odd­ly cathar­tic moment for Agnes, who is sym­bol­ic of thou­sands of peo­ple who nev­er receive jus­tice after being assault­ed, and reflects the strange rhythms of Sor­ry, Baby – a film which doesn’t pre­tend to have all the answers, but cer­tain­ly under­stands the bur­den of shame placed on sex­u­al assault sur­vivors, and how nav­i­gat­ing the world in the after­math of assault feels like walk­ing through dense fog, blind­ing reach­ing for a hand to guide you to the oth­er side.

Although based on the 2020 nov­el ​‘Box Hill’ by Adam Mars-Jones, Har­ry Lighton’s Pil­lion is most­ly unrecog­nis­able from its source mate­r­i­al, retain­ing only a few cru­cial details. Gone is the 1970s Sur­rey set­ting, along with the first-per­son nar­ra­tion and reck­on­ing with queer iden­ti­ty at the height of the AIDs cri­sis. Kept are the names – Col­in and Ray – and the latter’s ties to the local BDSM bik­er com­mu­ni­ty, but where Mars-Jones’ nov­el skewed heart­break­ing, this loose adap­ta­tion is broad­ly buoy­ant, as the mild-man­nered traf­fic war­den Col­in (Har­ry Melling) finds him­self entan­gled in a dominant/​submissive rela­tion­ship with the near mono­syl­lab­ic Ray (Alexan­der Skars­gård), a gor­geous unknow­able alien who seems to get exact­ly what he wants every sec­ond of every day with­out hav­ing to ask for it. And as unlike­ly as it seems when they first meet – one per­form­ing with his bar­ber­shop quar­tet in a pub, the oth­er in his bik­er leathers, not look­ing up from a stack of Christ­mas cards he’s fill­ing out – Ray wants Colin.

Col­in is flum­moxed by the atten­tion but imme­di­ate­ly game, accept­ing a writ­ten instruc­tion to meet out­side Brom­ley Pri­mark on Christ­mas Day, much to the con­cern of his well-mean­ing par­ents (who insist Col­in take the family’s long-haired dachs­hund with him for pro­tec­tion). What Col­in lacks in world­li­ness he makes up for in enthu­si­asm. Ray, unread­able, sees poten­tial, and quick­ly installs him in his spar­tan flat, where their sex­u­al rela­tion­ship begins in earnest. From here Col­in is induct­ed into a world of leather, lube and delayed grat­i­fi­ca­tion; he takes to it like a duck to water.

Har­ry Melling has been doing con­sis­tent­ly great work as a char­ac­ter actor, par­tic­u­lar­ly in The Bal­lad of Buster Scrug­gs and Har­vest, but Pil­lion marks his first bona fide lead­ing role, and the del­i­cate bal­ance of Colin’s char­ac­ter is a tes­ta­ment to Melling’s skill. He’s a ner­vous, awk­ward sort, with a hang­dog expres­sion and one foot con­stant­ly in his mouth, but as he grows in con­fi­dence through his rela­tion­ship with Ray, Col­in comes into his own, under­stand­ing him­self bet­ter through explor­ing his sex­u­al desires. He’s the per­fect foil to Ray, a tow­er­ing mon­u­ment of qui­et machis­mo with just a glint of good humour, and the chem­istry between Melling and Skars­gård in their tricky tightrope dou­ble act is essen­tial to Pillion’s effec­tive emo­tion­al core.

While some of the weight of Mars-Jones’ nov­el is lost by updat­ing its time peri­od and giv­ing Col­in a more sup­port­ive fam­i­ly, the biggest mis­step comes in a changed end­ing, opt­ing for an ambigu­ous end to Col­in and Ray’s sto­ry. While the gen­er­al light­ness inject­ed in rip­ples across Pil­lion is to the film’s cred­it, the final act threat­ens to reduce the poignan­cy of the cen­tral rela­tion­ship by sug­gest­ing it’s quite replic­a­ble. Per­haps the inten­tion is to indi­cate that Colin’s life doesn’t end with Ray (while it may have start­ed with him) but the con­clu­sion under­mines the well-bal­anced mix­ture of ten­der­ness and tur­moil in both Lighton’s script and the two cen­tral performances.

Nev­er­the­less, Pil­lion under­stands the excru­ci­at­ing vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of vocal­is­ing desire both sex­u­al and emo­tion­al, realised on-screen with some of the most erot­ic and unin­hib­it­ed sex scenes in recent mem­o­ry (with spe­cial cred­it to inti­ma­cy coor­di­na­tor Rob­bie Tay­lor-Hunt). The bold­ness, nuance and humour with which Lighton nav­i­gates BDSM dynam­ics as well as Col­in and Ray’s per­son­al and joint com­plex­i­ties results in a film that’s fre­quent­ly touch­ing and sur­pris­ing, less of an adap­ta­tion and more of a reimag­in­ing that com­pli­ments the source mate­r­i­al rather than repli­cates it.

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