A lot can be said about biker Ray played by Alexander Skarsgård back seat: He’s tall, he’s fair, he’s intimidating, he’s fair, he’s handsome. The list goes on. There is one physical feature, however, that rises above the rest, and that is Ray’s tiny glasses. He wears them when he is studying. He wears them around the house. They are unique and charming. They are the best accessories in the entire movie.
This is part of why Ray’s little glasses are such a joy to have in a movie back seat This is because they allow us as the audience to get to know him as much as Colin (Harry Melling). The two begin a somewhat unconventional romance after meeting at Colin’s local pub over Christmas, with their first date consisting of a back-alley blowjob and small talk. This isn’t necessarily a change for Colin – too romantic and sexually experienced to know (or want to) better for himself – who repeatedly submits to Ray’s literal demands. Part of why Colin devotes himself to Ray is trying to figure it out: he hopes that if he just gives up control one more time, he’ll be let into Ray’s world.
It’s almost a surprise when part way through the film we learn that Ray is a reader. Most of the things we’ve seen him do are cheesy by comparison: raise a big dog, ride motorcycles, and wrestle. When we see him reading a Knausgaard novel while wearing reading glasses, the image feels like the punch line of a joke that the film has been setting up the entire time. In Ray’s bare-bones house, spotless and white and lacking any of the familiar comforts that make Colin’s life with his parents so comfortable, there is a boy who reads contemporary auto-fiction who requires very little reading glasses to do so. They’re the only feature of Ray that feels like an anomaly and thus even hotter.
To Colin’s and the audience’s dismay, we never got to know much about Ray. This narrative edge is by design; What Colin has to learn through this relationship is that he is not as satisfied as he thinks he should be. The glasses suggest a vulnerability that is otherwise hidden from Colin. As we – and Colin’s family – try to understand Ray’s entire deal, that information is given to us only visually. Characters often note Ray’s beauty despite how absurd it is to look at. Slutty Little Glasses is grounded and contradictory: Is Ray secretly a nerd? Is he nearsighted? How old was she when she started wearing them? The mystery lingers long after the lights come on, but at least we have little trinkets – a memento, a symbol of an attractive person coming and going.
<a href=