Explosive, Dominating And Always One Step Ahead
Tick, Tick, Tick, Tick……BOOM!!!!
The most explosive, dominating, and shocking film of the season, if not the year has arrived! Chloe Domont’s Fair Play is always one step ahead. Right when you think something is going to happen, it does but it’s never what you think it will be.
Emily (Phoebe Dynevor) and Luke (Alden Ehrenreich) are both ambitious and hardworking employees at an elite hedge fund in Manhattan. They’re also passionately in love and have been dating for the past two years which they’ve hidden from their firm due to its strict policy against it. Fair Play opens with the two of them on top of the world. Newly engaged and rumors of a long-awaited promotion for Luke (Brought to his attention by an excited Emily) put the cherry on top of their passion. Drinking expensive bottles of champagne in the shower and satisfying sexual urges so severe that they can’t even make it to their bed and end up on the floor is just a normal part of their routine. All is bliss…..until Emily gets called to a bar at 2:00 in the morning where their boss Campell (Ray Donovan’s Eddie Marsen) informs a shocked Emily that SHE will be getting the promotion.
A very embarrassed Emily sheepishly returns to the apartment and informs Luke of the news. Dynevor’s delivery of Emily’s apology is so upsetting because her tone, facial expression, and body language perfectly illustrate that she feels like such a bad person for jumping the gun and telling Luke he’d be getting the promotion before she knew for sure. In her defense, his promotion looked to be in the bag when she told him and she actually DOES deserve it more. Published in an elite finance magazine when she was just 17 and got her way through school with the help of a prestige scholarship, this is someone who’s fought tooth and nail to get to where she is while Luke despite being a very hard worker just isn’t on Emily’s level and only got his job because he was fostered off on the firm by a relative who didn’t want him.
Luke smiles and tells Emily he’s so proud of her but his inability to hide his disappointment is at an all-time high. “It’s just a job” many would surely tell him. He’ll have to get over it eventually………Right?
This would be a very nice outcome but with it would come no film. Men who feel threatened by a woman's success (Especially women they’re involved with) is by no means a reflection on all men but these kind of insecure little boys sure do take up a lot of space. Guilt is ingrained into Emily for a good majority of the film but it doesn’t stop her from continuing to dominate at work - For the most part…
The abusive climate of Wall Street culture is kept at perfect temperature. Perfect meaning cold and raw throughout. No warmth or humanity anywhere. There are many moments when they’re talking about work and I had no clue what they were saying. The context of the words can only be identified through their tones and mannerisms. If Wall Street is a chaotic Wonderland, Campbell is the “Red Queen” as his “Off with their heads!” reign over his dangerous monarch keeps everyone in line.
Luke as Emily’s new analyst doesn’t have the best judgment and she tries to gently explain why his predictions aren’t going to help but sensing he feels powerless and needs a win, she hesitantly agrees to his stock predictions. Of course, Luke's predictions are faulty and cost the firm 25 million. Campbell slaughters Emily a new one, calling her a “dumb fucking bitch” before asking her if she wants him to repeat it. Emily insists she can fix it and fix it she does with a risky ploy Luke insists won’t work and it ends up not only making back the 25 million but more than they initially started with. All the drama of the past day is water under the bridge as Campbell hands Emily a check for more than half a million dollars as a way of apology. Easier for some to apologize with money than actual words. It’s insulting but let’s face it half a million dollars is always nice except when you have to sell your soul for it. Emily’s hair actually bounces as she walks into work the next day all pleased with herself.
Luke’s insecurities continue to send this once-perfect couple spiraling downhill. He withholds sex and when he gives in, he can’t get himself “There”, he starts relying on self-help books written by men with misogynistic views and tells Emily she dresses like a cupcake. Emily’s guilt turns to irritation as Fair Play carries on and she takes more pleasure in her success. She goes out to a strip club with her male co-workers, laughs at their extreme jokes, and flirts with the stripper to their delight. “She’s an animal” they smirked the next day as Luke silently fuming listened to their laughter.
Not that it could be a complete surprise to him. At least twice, Emily comes home drunk, laughing, and calls Luke pathetic when he insults her for thinking she's “One of the boys”. She still undermines herself to a degree even going so far as to buy new clothes after Luke’s spiteful cupcake comment. Luke’s work performance grows more and more incompetent and by the time he lands out of a job, the tension between him and Emily has gone from sniping at each other to full-blown screaming. These scenes are shocking because they’re so extreme but never feel staged. The role of great acting and sharp writing plays in these scenes' execution couldn’t be more important.
Fair Play is Domont’s feature film debut but having directed episodes of Showtime's Billions, she’s no stranger to the world she is creating. Luke and Emily’s apartment and the work offices were all hand-built and filmed on a soundstage. Domont couldn’t find any location that matched her exact vision so with the right budgeting priorities and a loyal team of workers, she brought her vision to life. You’d have never known it was a built set.
Once she had her actors down, everything else fell right into place. This was a film people wanted to make and Dumont’s a filmmaker who knows exactly what she wants and still knows how to prioritize so as not to sacrifice the elements of her script that are most important.
Marsen delivers his most frightening role, arguably his best. His stare is so icy and terrifying, and his mannerisms and way of speaking are so specific to his generation, that he’s like a cheetah. He slowly walks like one down to his waters, takes a sip, and pounces unexpectedly on his prey to make his slaughter.
In order for the demolition of Luke and Emily’s relationship to fully register with audiences, we have to really root for them as a couple in the opening scenes. We have to believe in their sexual chemistry and power couple compatibility and by God do these actors deliver. Ehrenreich nor Dynevor are so very new to the acting world but their familiarity with audiences is really starting to soar off. Ehrenreich will be recognizable to audiences from his role as “Senate Aide” alongside Robert Downey Jr. in Oppenheimer, where he dominates Jr. in the closing moments. Dynevor was the lead in season one of Bridgerton. I’ve not watched Bridgerton, but nothing but good things have I read about her work in the show and she, Ehrenreich, and Marsen will surely continue to fly across the skies of great scripts.
The structure is very important when writing a great script. You have to really make sure you don’t leave anything out but also trust the writing enough to let its greatness speak for itself. Domont knows how to compartmentalize these tasks. The ending scene alone has to be the most incredible ending I've ever seen. I hadn't realized until Fair Play ended that I’d been waiting for a film like this for so long. I thought it would never come. I think audiences aren’t hungry - They’re STARVING for great cinema, great shows, great writing, stories, performances, etc. After the painful yet necessary and important writers' strike and what is hopefully the final stages of the actor's strike, people don’t want mediocrity anymore. We want GREAT ART and so long as filmmakers like Domont get the keys to their own vehicles, we may very well be entering a new dawn. The Golden Age Of Cinema is an ideal but did it ever really exist? Probably not but it may very well very very soon.
Now it should be noted that Fair Play opens and closes with scenes of blood. If blood makes your stomach turn, just swallow your pride and make it work. Fair Play is NOT “That kind of film”. Violence eventually enters the picture in the third act but not in the way you’d expect for a film on Wall Street. It's horrifying and devastating because you do not see it coming. The tone of the final stages of Fair Play is very claustrophobic and nauseating. Then the final scene comes and blows all audiences off the face of the earth with its effortless sense of jaw-dropping intensity.
Fair Play like Todd Fields' TAR deals with power dynamics through a very observational lens so for this film to be released just as America narrowly avoided a government shutdown must be a coincidence but its timing is very very haunting. If Fair Play’s ending gives any foreshadowing, the most corrupt should be very frightened right now. Maybe some of them thought they could just get away with “It”. Well……..They can’t.
Tampa Theatre. (n.d.). Fair Play (2023). https://tampatheatre.org/movie/fair-play/