Fair Play (2023)
Written and directed by Chloe Domont
This film plays out the sexual politics of a forbidden office romance. It's a setup -- two attractive people working for a high-powered finance company striving to succeed while keeping their highly charged sexual relationship hidden -- that could easily be rendered as a predictable comedy. Instead, it takes the thriller route, and this choice seems like the only possible approach if a filmmaker takes seriously the situation's sexual and gender politics.
Chloe Domont wrote and directed this fine thriller; after several years working in television, "Fair Play" is an impressive debut feature. The tension that she builds, scene by scene, rests on both the script and how she shoots it. In the second half she borrows liberally from horror film pacing and framing, so that each threat to Emily seems deadly. As a viewer I worried about her safety several times, because much like a character in a horror movie, she goes into threatening situations without backup. (The script supplies her with no friends at all, which in retrospect makes you wonder just how controlling Luke has been during their relationship.)
To begin, the employees of a high-powered financial firm watch as a manager goes berserk in his glass-walled office for all to see. Some of them may pity him, some mock him as a weak link that has rightfully been cut out, but all of them wonder who's going to be promoted to replace him. This includes his direct reports, such as Luke and Emily, a good-looking pair who are secretly having an affair against company policy. Off the clock, they repair separately across Manhattan to the apartment they share. Once inside the door and freed from the pretense of their jobs, they strip off their clothes and have ecstatic sex on the floor.
The night after their manager loses it, they decide to marry. But they still have to keep their love secret.
Alden Ehrenreich and Phoebe Dynevor in “Fair Play”
They figure Luke (Alden Ehrenreich) has the best shot to get the guy’s job. He's been at the firm longer and is, ahem, a man. When Emily (Phoebe Dynevor) is promoted instead, he now reports to her.
At first, he's great about it. The first words out of his mouth are congratulations. Relieved, she promises to do everything she can to support him so that he can be the next one promoted to "PM" (exactly what this stands for is never spelled out, which is kind of funny in itself). But then he proceeds to undermine Emily -- first unintentionally, then more directly. It turns out that he wants to "make it on his own" without her help, or at least that's how he puts it. In fact, as his supervisor, Emily still has to approve anything he recommends.
A trade that he hopes will impress the big boss, which Emily reluctantly approves against her instincts, goes badly wrong and puts them in the shithouse. Eddie Marsan plays the boss — some viewers will recognize him from last spring's Amazon Prime series "The Power," in which he plays a two-bit crime lord — he brings the same energy to this role, calling Emily a stupid fucking bitch for losing $25 million, then says it again in case she didn't hear it the first time.
Meanwhile, Luke has started watching the boss’s how-to-succeed videos religiously -- almost literally, as we find out later when he calls the boss "a god" to his face. He pretty much goes off his rocker, tearing apart not only his career but his relationship with Emily. That support he offered her when she got promoted? It was just pretense. It turns out that Luke is one of those guys who thinks that the advice to "fake it til you make it" applies to all relationships and situations. He knows how one should behave, but there's nothing behind it, because as a loser inside and out, he's all bluff. His own moment of going berserk in the office and being dragged away is just around the corner.
I’ve gone on too long about the male character; he tries to make the story all about him, after all. But it’s Emily’s story, and Dynevor absolutely tears up the place. She’s believable in every moment — sexy in the bedsheets, analytic in the balance sheets, she too knows how to behave in her new role as a manager who has to pretend to enjoy a celebratory visit to a strip club when her next trade makes back all the money she lost on Luke’s folly and then some.
Even more impressively, she hardens at the film’s end when she sets herself on settling the score with Luke, and she delivers a fine catharsis. As I once told someone, you know you’ve had a bad day when your boss snaps at you to clean up the blood.
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I recommend the review in the San Francisco Chronicle by Susie Bright, who makes the insightful point that the character Luke seeks most the approval of the big boss because of daddy issues. Yes, he does seem, all things considered, not fully grown up.
"Fair Play" is in theaters now but will be viewable on Netflix later this month.