Chloe Domont’s slinky corporate thriller about Wall Street, toxic masculinity, and epic jealousy opens with a daring gambit: menstrual sex.
Emily (Phoebe Dynevor), an uptown financial researcher at a hedge fund sneaks off to the bathroom at a wedding with her beau, Luke (Alden Ehrenreich) for hasty fumbling. Sneaking around is second nature for a couple whose romance represents a policy breach at work.
When a superior is fired, precipitating the first of several work-related meltdowns, Emily assumes that Luke, her fellow researcher and secret love, is certain of promotion. Instead, Campbell, their ruthless boss (a scene-stealing Eddie Marsan) summons her. Class plays a part in the implosion that follows: Emily is from the wrong side of the tracks while Luke was hired through family connections.
His blazing sense of entitlement is matched by wounded pride. He consistently undermines Emily with remarks about her clothing and insinuations about her relationship with Campbell. Worse, he embarks on a series of embarrassing, hamfisted attempts to impress the higher-ups. “This firm has become my religion; you have become my god,” he tells an unimpressed Campbell. Ehrenreich’s impressively repellent performance couldn’t be further from his loveable heel in the Coen brothers’ Hail, Caesar.
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Emily, meanwhile, erases her femininity to fit in with the big boys, attending strip clubs and late-night drinking sessions.
Unsurprisingly, Emily and Luke’s engagement party does not go well.
Fair Play was acquired by Netflix following a bidding war at Sundance. It’s a fitting home for Chloe Domont’s debut feature, which pivots around a star-making turn from Bridgerton’s Dynevor, with a keen line in eroticised gaslighting that will sit nicely beside three seasons of stalker soap, You. Brian McOmber’s angular score adds to the anxiety.
