The first thing that surprises you about the thriller Fair Play from Netflix, is its apparent resemblance to other films that pit ambitious characters against one another for victory. It is almost inevitable not to remember Oliver Stone’s Wall Street from 1987, in its first scenes. In particular, those that make it clear that the relationship between Emily (Phoebe Dynevor) and Luke (Alden Ehrenreich) will become poisonous and violent when she must pass the test of greed. But comparisons with the ’80s classic end when director Chloe Domont — making her film debut — takes its characters and turns them into enemies.
Because not only will it achieve an erotic tension that is surprising for its aggressive quality, but it will also turn the feature film into a sordid battle. Fair Play is not a relationship drama, nor does it want to explore the reasons why the need for power breaks a relationship. It is a violent, brutal and brilliant battle between half-truths, manipulations and traps. A confrontation that will bring out the worst in their characters and also their hidden abilities to convince and push others into misfortune. Does it seem like a deplorable scenario?
Fair Play
Netflix’s Fair Play is not just an erotic thriller that relates sexual desire to power and ambition. It is also an intelligent exploration of the greed of the contemporary world and how, from love to hate, there is a step. A distance that can disappear when the need to succeed becomes a weapon and much worse, a way to attack through manipulation and resentment.
It is not at all. In fact, what is most surprising is that the production takes unusual paths to tell the old story of how love cannot withstand competition between rivals. All from a malicious perspective. Can two identical talents with the same goals tolerate one of them having the advantage? This is what will happen when Emily receives a promotion. Luke will seem to settle, but in reality, the situation will only push both of them to fight with all their weapons. Not only to succeed – that is of course – but also to humiliate.
When triumph is an uphill road
Fair Play handles numerous current topics without making them tedious, preachy, or too obvious. So while Emily celebrates his victory and Luke understands for the first time what failure can be, several things happen in the background.
The script analyzes everything from gender, the role of women and men in finance, to fear and violence, in the midst of elegant scenes. All of them well constructed but completely supported by their actors. This couple, with notable sexual chemistry, can also hate each other with the same desire with which they have sex. What the director uses to show how from love to hate, there is only one step.
In addition to the burden of enmity that the new position of Emily causes, there is the fact that no one knows that she is committed to Luke. Which gives him a slight advantage over her. But Emily knows this, so she plays the influence cards in her favor. The film moves forward to explore how the violent and strategic traps the couple sets for each other are a way of reflecting the financial world as a whole. But beyond that, at the same time it is a way to link what happens on screen — the progressive enmity between characters — with a complicated point.
A revenge between two enraged lovers
For his last scenes, Fair Play He found a way to narrate the fall into disaster of a sour romance and, at the same time, the inner darkness of his characters. But not in the style of a traditional thriller. With a group of ruthless and despicable characters, the film is not satisfied with providing a new dimension about hatred out of greed. At the same time, it makes it clear that we are all too close to it for it to be latent.
What becomes evident, to the extent that Luke and Emily They understand that hate is just another way of relating to each other. In the same way as the ambition to succeed, it is a type of erotic need. The film establishes all kinds of uncomfortable comparisons that take it to new terrain and make it inevitable that it questions what its characters need to be happy. It’s not about money, nor about a stable and conventional romance. It is an almost insatiable desire to conquer, destroy and devastate.
This couple who ends up ruined — and not in the most obvious way — could be anyone. An element that the plot makes clear, for a distressing and realistic ending. Greed is, at the same time, the breaking point of contemporary morality, convertedin sex and the need for escape. The strangest and most bitter moral of the plot.