The Media Tourist

Edgy erotic thriller puts a relationship in jeopardy in the cutthroat world of Wall Street

Fair Play
Starring Phoebe Dynevor, Alden Ehrenreich & Eddie Marsan
Directed by Chloe Domont
R

Opening for one week in limited theaters Friday, Sept. 29 (and on Netflix Friday, Oct. 6)

A tight, terrifically edgy erotic thriller, Fair Play is about a pair of young lovers whose lives are turned inside out when one of them gets a big promotion, just after they’ve become engaged to be married. Luke (Alden Ehrenreich—he was young Han Solo in Solo and singing cowboy Hobie Doyle in Hail, Caesar!) and Erin (Phoebe Dyneovor, who played Daphne on TV’s Bridgerton) are both drone-bee, grunt-work analysts at a cutthroat, high-pressure Wall Street hedge fund.

When she’s unexpectedly bumped into a coveted spot of portfolio manager, glass-walled office and all, Luke’s resentment festers and grows—especially since he was expecting to get the job for himself. He feels entitled to it, mainly because he’s always wanted it. He accuses Erin of dressing like a “cupcake” and sleeping her way to the top. Love becomes loathing, and their relationship gets pushed to frightening extremes.

It only adds to the pressure of them already having to keep their romance a secret, as it violates their company’s ban on workplace dalliances. And as Erin ascends into the company’s elite “boy’s club” of billion-dollar deals, locker-room jokes and strip clubs, she holds her own on the playing field of misogynistic sexual dynamics and office power plays while Luke sits and simmers on the sidelines.

Director Chloe Dumont, who honed her craft on TV series like Billions, Ballers and Suits, makes a terrifically impressive feature-film debut behind the camera, torquing up the wickedly smart tension as Luke and Erin’s unbridled romantic passion (wild, messy bar-bathroom sex!) turns toxic. With both competing to curry favor of the firm’s ruthless boss (veteran British actor Eddie Marsan), their shared apartment becomes a psycho-sexual battlefield. And their second bathroom-sex tryst, late in the film, takes a dynamically different turn from the first.

The movie effectively makes us feel that Luke and Erin do, on some primal level, really love each other, and demonstrates one way love can devolve into lust, emotional assault, raging arguments, sexual battery and even worse. Ehrenreich is always adroit and watchable, but it’s Dumont who grounds the film in a performance so hot it leaves blisters, smoldering like the burning ends of the cigarettes Erin puffs when she’s nervous, sharper than the pointed heels of the stiletto pumps she wears with her power suits. Eventually, you know something’s gotta give—and something’s bound to break. All’s fair, as the saying goes, in love and war, and Fair Play paints a searing picture of lovers on an uncharted collision course in a relationship going madly off the rails.

The abrupt, ambiguous, cut-to-black ending might not satisfy everyone, but this is a movie that certainly gets in your head with thorny issues of sex, gender roles, burning jealousy, greed and the caustically competitive world of work. It’s steamy and sexy as hell, as jagged as shards of broken glass…and as pointed as the tip of a stiletto heel.

—Neil Pond