I had hear Fair Play was an erotic thriller. I’m not above streamer approved smutty entertainment, so I plunged in. I did not get something erotic. I did get something better: a great movie. Fair Play uses the guise of sexy thriller to tell a great tale of workplace and gender power dynamics. Apparent those acting classes Alden Ehrenreich was forced to take during Solo paid off! Or maybe he didn’t need them in the first place.
We first meet Emily (Bridgerton’s Phoebe Dynevor) and Luke (Alden Ehrenreich) happily dancing and making out at Luke’s brother’s wedding. During an attempted tryst in the bathroom, Luke’s engagement ring pops out, where he proposes to Emily. Normally this is a happy moment, but not when you’re keeping your relationship secret, which the couple are doing, separately arriving at work at their high stakes corporate finance jobs. Just before they reveal their relationship status to Human Resources (HR), CEO Campbell (Eddie Marsan) promotes the younger but more successful Emily, leaving Luke behind as her underling. But nothing happens, and they happily marry before inadvertently causing the financial crisis of 2008 in a final act plot twist.
Ok that doesn’t happen. What does follow is a hyper tense game of chicken between Alden Ehrenreich and Phoebe Dynevor. Dynevor is especially excellent. As the woman rising above all the men in her field, she’s clearly enjoying the fruits of her labor while also trying to be supportive of her overlooked fiance, basically navigating a minefield of vicious fragile toxic men. She’s tries everything with Luke: supportive at work, sexy at home, empathetic and supportive to his other pursuits. In addition, she has to out dude the PMs and spend hours chatting with Campbell while also excelling above everyone else at work. Ehrenreich plays off of Dynevor’s choices, slowly escalating his desperation, sadness, and growing anger/resentment towards the woman he supposedly loves. Little by little he becomes more scary as his fantasy in his head dissolves, really upping the tension and fear towards what he might be capable of in his darkest moments. Props to writer director Chloe Domont, whose story really keeps you guess and on the edge of your seat, terrified to see how far Emily or Luke are willing to go for their job.
And that’s the secret sauce of what makes Fair Play so electric. This movie is an HR training session on cocaine. The investment banking/finance sector is a perfect work environment to pair with Luke and Emily’s home life. This world is dog eat dog: any chance you have to get a leg up on your fellow analysts, you take with no remorse. As such, your whole life is built around this; if you fail, like Luke starts to, it unravels his entire personality and belief in himself. We see all the ways this toxic hyper capitalist environment pulls the secret couple apart. Emily has to prove her “just one of the guys” weird tests by going to drink with the other PM’s at a strip club and forced conversations with the CEO all hours of the night. Desperate for answers, Luke goes to WASPy alpha male self help books about “defining your narrative.” Each little decision after Emily’s promotion transforms each person little by little into someone else the other is not in love with, and actually despises. But in this financial world? That’s just another day at the office, and if you can keep your private life away from the money, no one cares. Chloe Domont shows how this vicious financial workplace accelerates divergent life paths, mutating people into entirely different people overnight because their career comes before anything else. If you win, you are the alpha like Emily, flaunting her power and confidence…but if you lose, like Luke just might? Your paranoia and desperation turns you mean and borderline evil.
And that’s what Fair Play looks like in finance. This movie made me more confident in my decision to forgo a high intensity money making career path, favoring friendship, family and harmony instead. I’m sure the coked up finance bros doing lines off strippers butts will call me a p*ssy. All I have to say, better to have a p*ssy then a “for sale” sign all over my body, bro. Greed will NEVER buy happiness.