Writer-director Chloe Domont’s searing and electric “Fair Play” is set in present day but in many ways feels like a throwback psychosexual thriller a la “9 ½ Weeks” and “Disclosure,” “Fatal Attraction” and “Unfaithful.” Nearly everyone in this film behaves as if we’re in a time and place at least a generation prior to the age of #MeToo, and that might stretch credulity — until you realize there probably are some workplaces in which far too many people still behave as if they didn’t get the memo.
This is a lurid, cynical, nasty, rough piece of work, and I mean that in the best possible way. With Alden Ehrenreich (“Solo: A Star Wars Story”) and Phoebe Dynevor (Daphne in “Bridgerton”) delivering arguably the most memorable work of their relatively young careers, writer-director Domont displaying a gift for brutal and at times almost campy dark dialogue and cinematographer Menno Mans providing the film noir visuals, “Fair Play” is a mesmerizing study of two people who have convinced themselves they’re madly in love when in fact they’re trapped in a quagmire of toxicity that could ruin both of them if someone doesn’t wake up and escape to the other side of the globe. It’s also sexy as hell and so bruising in a couple of instances that I was reminded of Neil LaBute’s pitch-black minor classic “In the Company of Men.”
The opening scene feels like something out of a crime family movie, with Ehrenreich’s Luke introducing Dynevor’s Emily to his kin at his brother’s wedding reception:
“Uncle J, this is the woman I can’t stop talking about.”
“So, Mister Ivy League has the best-looking girl in the room. … If this guy gives you any kind of trouble, just let me know, I’ll sort him out.”
One half-expects to hear a Rolling Stones song on the soundtrack and a Scorsese-esque voice-over narration.
We cut to Luke and Emily in the bathroom, with Luke gushing about how much he effing loves Emily as they start consuming one another, and let’s just say things take a turn you almost never see in a mainstream movie — and we’ll later get a bathroom sex scene that’s even more jarring.
We soon learn Luke and Emily have risen above their respective working-class upbringings and both work as financial analysts at One Crest Capital, a high-end, cutthroat hedge fund in Manhattan. (Although Emily and Luke have been together two years, live together and just got engaged, they’ve kept the relationship a secret so as not to violate company policy.)
What a place, this One Crest Capital. The team of analysts who work the phones and sit glued to their multiple computer screens is about 99% male and 95% white, with the project managers and the firm’s president, Campbell (Eddie Marsan in a great performance), carrying out their Masters of the Universe business in glass-walled offices. They engage in sexist banter and couldn’t care less if it offends.
When a portfolio manager is fired and starts destroying his office with a golf club, his colleagues keep watching a deadly dry Human Resources video, turning up the volume and chuckling quietly over the breakdown taking place across the way. Hmmm, that means a promotion is open, who do you think will get it?
Both Luke and Emily believe it’s Luke’s time — but Emily is summoned to a bar at 2 a.m. by the coolly intimidating and all-powerful Campbell, who informs her that she’s got the job. Boom! Just like that, the dynamic between Emily and Luke changes drastically, with the unctuous Luke saying he supports Emily even as his eyes flicker like a serial killer. This guy is NOT happy with having to report to Emily, especially after he commits an eight-figure blunder while Emily is dazzling Campbell and her fellow portfolio managers with whiz-bang unicorn killer declarations such as, “Quinn bought it at 26. We should sell now and buy in on YData. The market doesn’t understand the stock. … Revenue is up 45%, year-over-year, and trades at a low multiple to my forward sales projections.” Who knows what that means, but it’s impressive as all get-out.
Emily starts dressing and comporting herself like a 1940s femme fatale, owning her status, even going out with the boys for a night of debauchery at a strip club. (Luke isn’t invited. He’s not in that stratosphere.) Luke continues to unravel, wallowing in a pool of self-pity, rage and jealousy, refusing to have sex with Emily, snarling at her and hurling accusations of her sleeping with Campbell, because in his twisted viewpoint that’s the only way she could have been promoted over him. Emily is no saint, either, as she drunkenly calls Luke “pathetic,” is seems horrified by the idea of the engagement party her mother wants to throw for her and at times almost seems to be turned on by Luke’s despair.
They’re a mess, these two. Whether they stay together or set fire to this relationship, neither is walking away unscathed.
