TMS Movie Review: Fair Play
(Netflix)
The opening of Chloe Domont’s Fair Play will either make or break the viewer for the rest of the movie. If you can get past how polarizing and ridiculously unrealistic the scene is, you might be able suspend your disbelief for the rest of the film to enjoy the atmosphere, themes, performances and direction. If you can’t get past the opening, you might not want to bother with the rest of it. Fair Play is being marketed by Netflix and the press as a return of the ‘erotic thriller.’ In reality, it’s a character drama with some unsexy sex scenes. This doesn’t necessarily make the movie bad, but it’s the most recent example of misleading promo.
In upper class Manhattan, NY, Luke Edmonds (Alden Ehrenreich) and Emily Meyers (Phoebe Dynevor) are discreetly living together in a romantic relationship while also working as colleagues at a big shot Wall Street hedge fund. Under the impression Luke is going to get a promotion at the company after an employee is let go, things take an unexpected turn when the CEO, Campbell (Eddie Marsan), actually offers it to Emily. Though Luke is supportive at first, their relationship is quickly tested by both the power imbalance of Emily now being his superior and Luke’s growing insecurity.
(Netflix)
Rich Sommer and Sebastian de Souza appear as co-workers of the couple. Domont does double duty as screenwriter and director after beginning her career with short films and TV episodes, including for HBO’s “Ballers” (2017-19). The filmmaker having a background in television makes sense, since a number of shots and scenes of Fair Play feel like episodes of HBO’s “Succession” (2018-2023) and “Industry” (2020- ); which technically isn’t a dent on the picture’s quality since it is being distributed by Netflix. For the development of the main relationship between the leads, Domont seems to take cues from George Cukor’s Gaslight (1944) and Danny DeVito’s The War of the Roses (1989). Visually, Fair Play looks great and the performances by Dynevor and [especially] Ehrenreich are top notch. The script, however, has so many obvious and ludicrous moments that might linger in the back of viewers’ mind if they aren’t distracted by the direction and acting. By the end one wonders why Luke and Emily are even together and trying to make it work. Most, like me, were excited to see sexy love scenes in a movie for adults again. But instead, Domont chooses to use sex as a tool for unpleasant metaphors and foreshadowing. Nothing wrong with that, but again, it’s not what a lot of people went into the movie for.