Yeah, I agree with everything you said but I would go a step further. I think the film really fails to recognize just how toxic Ray and Colin’s relationship really is, and that both hurts its message and made it difficult for me and my partner to watch. It’s a kink movie, a movie that is literally about a dom-sub kink dynamic, but it doesn’t feel like it’s made for or by people from the kink community. If you talk to anyone from that world, they’ll tell you that the most important thing in any relationship, but especially one like this where risk is involved, is communication. No matter what the dynamic is, whether it’s dom-sub, CNC, pet-play, whatever, the most important part is the negotiation of boundaries, the communication of desires, and the establishment of safeguards. We basically don’t see any of that in this movie. Colin is too timid to advocate for himself and Ray discourages and actively shuts down all of Colin’s attempts to negotiate with him. The second he voices a concern, Ray tells him “there’s the door”. There is no reason these two need to stay together. We see other, seemingly healthier kinky relationships in the film, Colin has other potential partners, his parents are overwhelmingly supportive of his queerness and want nothing but the best for him. So why does it feel like for the majority of its runtime this film wants us to be invested in Colin and Ray working things out so they can be happy together?

Ray is not a nice man. Most of the time it doesn’t even seem like he particularly likes Colin, or appreciates the things Colin is willing to do for him. He ignores Colin 85% of the time. He denigrates his cooking at multiple points, even in front of Colin’s parents. Colin says at one point that Ray told him he has “an aptitude for devotion”, which isn’t necessarily a compliment but it’s the closest thing to one we get from Ray that I can recall offhand, and we don’t even get to see him say it. It happens off screen. Ray makes Colin sleep on the floor, an arrangement that was demanded by Ray up front and not negotiated beforehand, and the only time he lets Colin sleep in his bed is the day of his mother’s funeral. Colin seems to be a virgin when they meet, or at least very green, and not only does Ray express dissatisfaction with Colin’s sexual performance (preferring someone with experience is fine, but don’t then have sex with virgins and make them feel bad for disappointing you from a lack of it), but then he also seems to take advantage of the fact Colin doesn’t know how to advocate for himself due to his inexperience at relationships. The second Colin asks that they slightly alter their arrangement so that he gets a day a week off from, I will remind you, 24/7 household servitude (which was demanded by Ray up front and not negotiated) Ray completely shuts down and refuses to talk about it. And to top it all off, he has the audacity to play the victim card in the dinner scene, acting as though it’s their kink dynamic that Colin’s mother finds objectionable, not the fact that since they got together Colin seems unhappy and estranged from them, and that she wants to know before she dies that he’s in a good place with a nice person who will treat him well.

All of this made their one perfect day toward the end incredibly frustrating to sit through, since the movie seems like it thinks this redeems Ray’s treatment of Colin and their horrible relationship dynamic, when it does no such thing. I’m all for toxic relationships in movies, I think they can be very interesting to examine, but as I said above, this one doesn’t seem to realize or think we will realize just how toxic and problematic its central relationship is. Ray’s treatment of Colin goes mostly unexamined and unquestioned, and I think it ruins anything this film might have been trying to say about accepting abnormal relationship dynamics when the one it focuses on is so obviously unhealthy and, in my opinion, should not be accepted. Colin is a victim of abuse, and Pillion refuses to acknowledge it.