TIFF23: “Fair Play” — Netflix Film Review
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This piece was written during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, Fair Play wouldn’t exist.
“Women are forced to play ugly to survive,” writer/director Chloe Domont says as an introduction to her feature film debut Fair Play. Domont isn’t referring to survival in the wilderness or in an extreme environment. She’s talking about the high-stakes world of high finance. Emily (Phoebe Dynevor) and Luke (Alden Ehrenreich) work at a cutthroat hedge fund in Manhattan as analysts, but, as dictated by company policy, no one at the office knows they’re dating. Their warm home life is a stark contrast to their cold demeanors in the office, but these strict, separate lives they’ve created for themselves are called into question when Emily receives a promotion over Luke.
Somehow, Fair Play has been categorized as an erotic thriller, a genre that originated back in the 1980s. Fatal Attraction is perhaps the most famous movie of the genre, whose hallmark characteristic is (half-heartedly) looking at the way sex and power work in relationships. Anyone who’s seen Fatal Attraction, Body Heat, or any of the many similar films knows they aren’t setting out to make critiques of our society. The erotic thriller usually has some sort of criminal noir plot that is the shoddy framework upon which to display sex. To lump Fair Play into this genre is to miss its scaldingly hot critique of the power dynamics at play in the world of high finance. The career doesn’t especially matter though, because high finance could be swapped for a multitude of other careers. What Fair Play is interested in exposing is how sex works in a relationship, in the workplace, and how the two can become intertwined.
Fair Play comes about in a time when there are conversations about the value of sex scenes in movies. It’s a debate that shows up every other month on Twitter, with many saying sex plays no purposeful role in a movie. Even though it didn’t set out to be, Fair Play will likely find itself in the middle of this debate. Sex is used throughout the film as a means of tracking where these characters are emotionally and how the changing gender and power dynamics are affecting Emily and Luke. Fair Play makes a strong case for demonstrating that sex scenes can be used for purpose. Films like Blue Is the Warmest Color use it in a much more gratuitous manner. Fair Play is often uncomfortable to watch because of its intimate nature, not strictly in a sexual way, but in the realistic interactions between Emily and Luke. They seem like people you know, which makes the film feel all the more voyeuristic. It’s almost as though the audience is too close to these people, that they know too much, but that’s the point of Fair Play. It immerses the audience in the depths of this relationship and forces them to feel all of it.
There’s a taut tenseness to Fair Play, like a lean thriller from the ’90s. Calling it a psychological thriller may be a step too far, but the film is cerebral and its tension comes from the splintering of a relationship. Perhaps Fair Play borrows a little too much from the genre of psychological thrillers during its final act. Things skew a little toward the unbelievable and the outlandish in what is an otherwise realistic film. The plot becomes slightly far-fetched in an effort to really drive home the film’s overarching themes, but the ending is heavy-handed in the way the rest of the film distinctly is not.
Fair Play also acts as a reintroduction to Ehrenreich, who most will remember from the not-at-all-well-received Star Wars spin-off Solo: A Star Wars Story. He played the titular Han Solo, and even though he had the looks of a young Harrison Ford, he lacked the smug, reluctant hero-charm. Many wrote him off after that, but for those who saw glimmers of his potential in the Coen Brothers’ Hail, Caesar!, Fair Play is a vindication. And Dynevor, fresh off the success of her part in Bridgerton, is equally enthralling. The scenes between just the two of them are crackling with intensity, a powerful showcase of these young talents.
With the Netflix release of Fair Play, there’s concern that much of the nuance will be lost in the churn and burn nature of a streaming release. With at-home streaming services, it’s easy to be distracted by household members, pets, or a cell phone, and that’s not the environment Fair Play should be seen in. There’s far too much at play here not to have the viewer’s full attention, and Fair Play could warrant more than one watch to really pin down an opinion. Fair Play is a thorny, gnarly, tangled web that’s woven by Domont’s deft hands.
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