#MovieReview: Fair Play and shifting power dynamics
This is not a feel-good film; it deals with topics such as casual sexism and sexual abuse and offers no clean lines on who the audience should root for, if anyone.
Mild spoilers throughout
Fair Play might feel like a movie out of step with its time, but then so is the industry in which it lives.
The pitch-black debut from writer/director Chloe Domont invites viewers into the world of high finance where endless money fills gaps otherwise reserved for moral behaviour.
It is lurid and upsetting in a way that few modern films are, harkening back to the edgy eroticism of Fatal Attraction and Unfaithful.
But crucially, Fair Play flips the script by casting a powerful female (Phoebe Dynevor of Bridgerton fame) in the role famously inhabited by Michael Keaton and Richard Gere types.
Emily (Dynevor) and Luke (Alden Ehrenreich) work together at a high-pressure New York hedge fund where trades cost eight figures and one mistake costs careers.
The duo are both analysts at the same level and have a secret out-of-work romance unbeknownst to those in the office.
But this all changes when rumours of a promotion for Luke prove false and it instead goes to Emily.
Luke struggles to deal with the shift in power dynamic and it slowly poisons their relationship when it is brought into their home and bedroom.
Fair Play neither sympathises with Luke nor abnegates Emily, and is exacting in its exploration of traditional gender roles.
This is not a feel-good film; it deals with topics such as casual sexism and sexual abuse and offers no clean lines on who the audience should root for, if anyone.
These are the kind of issues that cinema is uniquely placed to portray, however, and Fair Play will no doubt spark discussion and discomfort in equal measure.
It is a polished, if not great, first feature that certainly adds Domont to the list of ‘ones to watch’ in the coming years.
Just don’t expect a barrel of laughs and fuzzy feeling once the credits roll.
Fair Play can be found on Netflix.
Rated 18 for Language, Sexual Content and Nudity.
3.5/5.
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