Fair Play
Chloe Domont pulls off quite the balancing act with her excoriating drama of female empowerment on Wall Street.
Fatal traction: Alden Ehrenreich and Phoebe Dynevor
On Wikipedia, Fair Play is described as an erotic psychological thriller. While at times the film strays into the sort of thing Michael Douglas became famous for in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it is anything but erotic. It’s not really a thriller, either, although some scenes do get pretty intense – in large part due to the acting chops of Phoebe Dynevor, Alden Ehrenreich and Eddie Marsan. Phoebe Dynevor and Eddie Marsan are actually English and the film was shot in Serbia, although the story is set largely among the glass towers of Lower Manhattan. Not that you’d know it. Drawing on the director’s own experience in the workplace in Hollywood (Chloe Domont directed two episodes of Showtime’s Billions), Fair Play explores the power dynamic between a high-flying couple immersed in corporate finance. Imagine if Edward Albee had scripted Wall Street (starring Michael Douglas)…
Like many characters we’ve seen before in white collar dramas of this ilk, Emily Meyers (Dynevor) and Luke Edmunds (Alden Ehrenreich) survive on a diet of adrenaline and hard liquor, creeping out of bed before dawn and working into the early hours to spin an unexpected profit. They drink, breathe and sleep high finance. There is talk of “equity strategies” and “over-hyped unicorns”, Domont’s screenplay proving unafraid to talk down its audience. These terms are real and they give this workplace an authenticity.
Playing against the rules of their company One Crest Capital, Emily and Luke move into the same apartment to cut costs, and then share their bed and then opt to share their future: with a pair of gold rings. But as in all partnerships, one is maybe brighter than the other, and Emily certainly has the greater appetite – for work, for money, for alcohol, and for sex. All this is surveyed by their boss Campbell with an impenetrable stare from his glass cage, played with icy authority and stillness by Eddie Marsan in one of his best performances to date (which is saying something). Then Campbell offers Emily a promotion, elevating her from the trenches to her own office overlooking the New York skyline. Luke, who has just proposed to her, struggles to be proud of his fiancée, but he is a guy in a man’s world and she is now one of the boys…
Initially Fair Play seems a slow-burn, but the texture and fabulous production design draws us into this world of the economic elite. Chloe Domont knows what makes a drama like this tick and she has solicited a terrific turn from Dynevor in a star-making performance, catapulting the actress into the same stratosphere occupied by her compatriots Jodie Comer and Daisy Edgar-Jones. Ehrenreich, too, is on top form, his initial sleaze barely concealing the vulnerability beneath the man’s bespoke tailoring as he struggles to keep up with the professional and sexual demands of his princess. Our empathies jump from one to the other but it’s hard not to side with the young woman who stumps the tactics of her male colleagues. “Bullish on the stock,” Emily knows how to turn a negative into a positive on the market. It’s quite an emotional balancing act but Domont sucks us onto this rarefied battlefield, making us care and then shocking us by the power games acted out by these two lovebirds.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Phoebe Dynevor, Alden Ehrenreich, Eddie Marsan, Rich Sommer, Sebastian de Souza, Patrick Fischler, Sia Alipour, Brandon Bassir, Jamie Wilkes, Geraldine Somerville.
Dir Chloe Domont, Pro Tim White, Trevor White, Allan Mandelbaum, Leopold Hughes and Ben LeClair, Ex Pro Rian Johnson and Chloe Domont, Screenplay Chloe Domont, Ph Menno Mans, Pro Des Steve Summersgill, Ed Franklin Peterson, Music Brian McOmber, Costumes Kate Forbes, Sound Ugo Derouard and John Warrin, Dialect coaches Adam Michael Rose and Liam French Robinson.
T-Street/Star Thrower Entertainment/MRC-Netflix.
113 mins. USA. 2023. UK and US Rel: 6 October 2023. Cert. 18.
