Fair Play
Synopsis: A couple who work together find their relationship cratering after she gets a promotion that he expected to get. (Streaming on Netflix as of October 2023)
*** Trigger Warning— a scene of sexual violence ***
Emily is smart and ambitious. But she has a hostile work environment. She’s an analyst for a hedge fund. Everyone at work is a man and an a-hole. They laugh whenever someone gets fired. They are proudly misogynistic. But she’s killing it at work anyway.
Normally, I would say, okay, what are the chances of everyone at a big office being a-holes? But this is the world of finance, so yeah, it’s only too believable that rank & file and the bosses are all horrible. But what I didn’t buy is that Emily would be unfazed by the hostility, to the point that she doesn’t even seem aware of it. I think we’re supposed to assume that Emily feels empowered, therefore she is armored against male toxicity.
Emily has a boyfriend, Luke. They are both analysts at the same firm, working long hours under pressure. They don’t want anyone at work to know that they’re together. But if people at work knew, at least they wouldn’t be able to accuse her of trying to sleep her way to the top. It’s good that Emily isn’t trying that strategy because her boss is a Troll. He’s cruel, like all trolls. And he’s very greedy –he’s in finance after all. His only negligibly redeeming feature is that he doesn’t sexually assault Emily. Troll does scream that she is an effing dumb b***h at one point, which is something that does make her flinch.
So, Fair Play is billed, erroneously, as an erotic thriller. Just because a couple have a lot of sex and you don’t know what invectives they will hurl at each other next, does not an erotic thriller make.
Outside of their capitalism-on-steroids workplace, where risk and tension rule the day, the couple are happy together. A bit on the actors who play Emily and Luke…
Phoebe Dynevor of Bridgerton fame is Emily. Ms. Dynevor is English. Here she plays a Long Islander who went to Harvard. I can believe she lost her Long Island accent in New England, but I can’t believe her American accent. She obviously went to the Kate Winslet Accent School, Titanic Division. She’s washed her English accent away, without acquiring an American accent; it sounds stilted and self-conscious. But her acting, or I should say, over-acting is fine.
Alden Ehrenreich is Luke. We meet him at a party where he is introduced as an “Ivy league boy who got the prettiest girl in the room.” He seems really into himself, but not toxic. Ehrenreich is a versatile actor –especially good in Hail, Caesar!– but here, he’s just required to chew some scenery. Maybe he prepped for the role watching Al Pacino in his 1980’s movies.
Emily and Luke have a lot of good sex. This is the erotic part of “erotic thriller.” They frequent public restrooms for intercoursing. Fortunately for them, no one ever needs to pee while they are going at it. We know this is a movie fantasy because the restrooms are all clean. Except for one time when Emily starts pouring menstrual fluid. The two lovers laugh about it and then escape the potential embarrassment of party-goers seeing their blood-stained clothes by climbing out the bathroom window. I have to give the screenwriter (Chloe Domont, also the director) credit for the period positivity.
Unfortunately, the Fates will be sending some trouble the happy couple’s way. Or, the Troll who heads the office will be. Emily overhears that Luke will soon be promoted. She’s so happy for him. They go back to their apartment and have sex. But the next day, the Troll comes rumbling through the office and announces that Emily is getting the promotion. Luke will be working as her assistant. Luke gives Emily a stiff smile and congratulates her.
Now the filmmaker kicks into high gear, delving into the issue of how men handle women who are more successful than they are. Badly, is the answer.
Luke starts drinking away his disappointment while unconvincingly telling Emily that he is proud of her. After one day working for her, he starts to come undone. He gives her bad work advice–intentional or not? This is where the thriller part of “erotic thriller” comes in.
Emily reassures Luke that she’ll help him get a promotion. She tries to stroke his ego by letting him know that she needs his D. But he now has erectile dysfunction. This is less than 48 hours after her promotion.
When Luke isn’t making a spectacle of himself at work where he tries to ‘go big or go home,’ he is home fiercely highlighting career improvement books and blowing money on how-to-succeed video seminars.
During Emily’s workday smoke breaks, she strides around Manhattan’s sidewalks sucking on ciggies in a fabulous camel-colored wrap coat. You can tell she’s thinking of how to fix Luke’s career so they can have happy restroom sex again. Oh, no! Back at the office Luke has lost money. So now she can’t even leave him for a smoke break. Back at the apartment, she makes a desperate bid to undo the emasculation her promotion has wrought by commanding him to (I’ll paraphrase here) “blank the blank out of me.” Neither he, nor his penis, respond positively to the directive.
Emily is getting fed up with catering to Luke, so she goes out to a strip club with the a-hole guys at work. Predictably, they tell degrading stories about women while they ogle the dancers. Emily gets into the objectifying spirit of things by raining Benjamins on the strippers and downing shots. When she finally staggers back to the apartment, Emily tells a sober Luke that he’s pathetic because he won’t laugh at the “jokes” the guys were telling at the strip club. Why would a woman find misogynistic humor amusing? I’ll tell you why… shockingly, Emily has become a finance bro!
Emily and Luke covertly argue at work, while at home they scream at each other like Leo and Kate in Revolutionary Road. Except that movie was good and this kinda sux.
Still, there is some amusement in seeing less than believable characters ravage their supposedly perfect romance as soon as she gets promoted over him.
P.S. Empowerment emphasizes the sense of pride and dignity of a person who has been in a marginalized/harassed group. But it can also imply that recognition of one’s worth prevents the psychological harm of ongoing harassment and injustice. In Fairplay, Emily is unaffected by the toxic masculinity of her workplace. Only her boyfriend’s resentment of her success stresses her. I can only say that of the few women I know who work/ed in finance, they did resent and were fatigued by their sexist workplace treatment (eg., accused of using sexual guile to get promotions, frozen out of networking etc.).
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