Chleo Domont | 1hr 53min
When corporate analyst Luke first discovers his co-worker and secret fiancée Emily has been promoted, his show of support can’t mask the disappointment in his eyes. Rumours whispered around the office suggested that he would be the one to take the place of the previously fired portfolio manager, and the hierarchy at the Manhattan hedge fund they work at is not an easy ladder to climb. It isn’t just the cutthroat executives and their exceptionally high expectations that feed the competition, but the white-collar workers beneath them are constantly undercutting each other’s successes as well. At least Luke and Emily share an emotional security that views individual successes as victories for both – but only really if Luke can use his future wife’s new position as a guaranteed leg-up for himself.
Power is both the end goal and the means to achieve it in Fair Play, enticing each character to the higher echelons of One Crest Capital, though this scheming is not merely contained to fraught office politics. It is deeply intertwined with Luke’s masculinity in his sexual relationship with Emily, keeping him from getting hard when his feelings of emasculation rise to the surface, and reinvigorating him when he takes forceful control. On one level he knows that she would never compromise her integrity, but he still can’t help letting nasty rumours about her sleeping with executives feed his insecurities. For Luke, this erotic thriller thus becomes a quest to assert his dominance in both the office and his personal life, while Emily gradually realises what compromises must be made to keep her position.
First-time director Chloe Domont winds up her spring-loaded narrative with careful control in Fair Play, mounting its tensions to a point that can no longer bear the weight of Luke and Emily’s mutual disdain. The passionate sex scenes drawn through so much of its first act gradually grow more strained with their increasing discomfort, and it certainly doesn’t help that they must subjugate their private romance every day to the sterile scenery of glass cubicles, pressed suits, and fluorescent lights.
Whatever seeds of intimacy are planted between colleagues here simply cannot survive the sexless brutality of corporate America and the competition it thrives on. As a result, primal desperation is the only instinct left in them, seeing Luke flail between expensive self-help gurus and publicly begging the CEO on his knees for a promotion. Conversely, Emily grounds her political manoeuvring in a keen self-awareness, navigating the gender dynamics of the workplace by involving herself in its misogynistic culture and thereby marking herself as an exception to its prejudices.
Anxiety only continues to climb beneath this main narrative as well in the constant phone calls from family members finding out about Emily and Luke’s secret proposal, and their frustrating insistence on an engagement party. Should news of their relationship make it back to the office, then the discovery would implicate them both in an extreme conflict of interest, and raise questions around whether she is leveraging her position for Luke’s benefit – which of course she is. The collision of personal and professional lives is inevitable, and when it finally does unfold, Domont delights in staging a savage, public display of contempt and humiliation. The struggle up the corporate ladder has a long list of casualties in Fair Play, and when gender roles are thrown into the roiling mix, intimate relationships and fragile egos are the first to be sacrificed.
Fair Play is currently streaming on Netflix.
