Fair Play is not the erotic thriller Netflix’s algorithm so desperately wants it to be. There is sex, yes, and a psychological duel, but very little perverse desire. It’s ultimately a very ugly film. That’s not its failure, but its intention. Fair Play is about the sort of guy a lot of women are uncomfortably familiar with – the one who’s perfect until he’s not, who’s an ally as long as he stays in power. It’s also about the sort of woman other women dread to become, the one who realises her own power is illusory only when it’s far too late.
Director Chloe Domont, fresh from Showtime’s finance drama Billions, has also set her feature debut around a New York City hedge fund. Emily (Phoebe Dynevor) and Luke (Alden Ehrenreich) are lustfully in love, co-workers who have unwisely blended work and life. He proposes by accidentally dropping the ring on the floor, having fallen to his knees and crawled up her dress in a public bathroom, reemerging with lips stained by period blood. He’s completely unbothered. The whole scene feels comfortably intimate and oddly romantic.
Relationships are against company policy. So, the next day, she leaves her engagement ring behind on the counter and they head to work. A portfolio manager is fired. Emily hears a rumour that Luke is next in line to take the job, only to eventually find out that she’s the one who got it. “I’m so happy for you,” Luke insists. But it’s at this moment that Domont, usually a little chilly in her approach to human interaction, goes in for the tightest of close-ups. Something vicious is brewing in those eyes.
The director, who also wrote the film’s script, has found a clever way to destabilise her own audience. Luke is cruel, pitiable, fearsome, and childlike. And Ehrenreich, nearly put on the wrong path of the commercial, leading man-type by his Star Wars role, is a far savvier actor with formidable control over his own craft. He makes Luke unnervingly believable, somehow both conscious and unconscious of his manipulations. He accuses her of dressing “like a f***ing cupcake” and then looks like a kicked puppy whenever he makes a mistake.
But Domont’s vision requires a little monstrosity from Emily, too. Dynevor, previously caged inside corsets and repression for Netflix’s Bridgerton series, here turns that rigidity into brittle determination. Emily’s the survivor you don’t feel particularly good about rooting for, who climbs the corporate ladder by ingratiating herself with “the boys”. She downs shots and leans in to listen to college-years stories of sexual violation. Eventually, a terrible realisation starts to dawn that she may actually enjoy this, that she not only wants to dominate Luke, but humiliate him. At one point, she leans over to whisper, only half-jokingly, “I promise to help your career if you eat my p****.”
The world of finance is realistically portrayed: a lot of company names are thrown around (“Shor”, “Baxter”, “Grove”), and when Emily’s boss (Eddie Marsan, whose stare could kill) calls her a “dumb f***ing bitch”, the film ploughs ahead, letting us know that this is exactly the environment she’s baptised herself into. And there are times, even, when Fair Play seems to teeter into black comedy. Luke, at one point, is left in a conference room literally barking like a dog, just to receive a crumb of attention. Yet the joke, ultimately, is on us – Fair Play closes with the uncomfortable reminder that these power games always have an ugly end.
Dir: Chloe Domont. Starring: Phoebe Dynevor, Alden Ehrenreich, Eddie Marsan, Rich Sommer. 18, 113 minutes.
‘Fair Play’ will be released on Netflix on 6 October
