Dfter the good success at the Sundance Film Festival in January, arrives on Netflix Fair play direct by Chloe Domont. The film, set in the world of finance with protagonists Phoebe Dynevor and Alden Ehrenreich, tells the story of the crisis of a couple who works in the same office. And it’s an excellent thriller with Pretty hot erotic scenes. But with a few too many unexpected events.
Fair playthe plot of the movie
Emily (Phoebe Dynevor) and Luke (Alden Ehrenreich), in addition to being happily engaged and living together, they have a wedding planned and are also colleagues in a prestigious trust fund, the One Crest Capital. However, the company’s internal policy is very strict and prohibits relationships between employees; for this reason Emily and Luke have to keep their affair under wrapsunder penalty of dismissal.
The relationship breaks down when she receives an important promotion, and Luke finds himself as her subordinate. And so tensions rise at home. As in the office, where Emily also has to deal with a predominantly male work environment the approaches of his superior (Eddie Marsan). What to do to maintain your position and not ruin the relationship with Luke?
Phoebe Dynevor and Alden Ehrenreich in a scene from “Fair Play”. (Netflix)
Well written and with many hot scenes
Directorial debut of Chloe Domont, established screenwriter, Fair play at first glance it seems a natural evolution of the erotic workplace thrillers that were popular in the 1990s. For example the legendary Revelations with Demi Moore who made life hell for Michael Douglas, guilty of having rejected his advances one evening at work.
And in fact Chloe starts right from that plot, but updating it to gray areas of work ethics and relationship boundaries today. Without forgetting all the post-metoo issues: from gender to money to the male ego.
«I was interested in how the toxicity of a work environment feeds into that of a relationship and vice versa», declared the director who, which is rare for a debut, does not take the women’s issue as her main focus. But rather outlines two fascinating, and at alternate times repelling, personalities who play a battle between the sexes almost on equal terms.
Luke is described with all the male stereotypes: Wonders how his girlfriend actually got the promotion and belittles her for her looks. Finally she reveals a fragile personality with whom one empathizes easily. On the other side, Emily is a fascinating and dual character. Tenacious but at the same time the opposite of a damsel in distress, much less a feminist martyr, a woman who easily assimilated into the patriarchal system to climb it.
Phoebe Dynevor and Alden Ehrenreich in a scene from “Fair Play”. (Netflix)
Very well written, and with just the right amount of creeping tension, Fair play it’s also beautifully photographed. Cold tones for the office, warm for their love nest, then mixed in a mix that messes up all the cards on the table. The film also surprises the realism of the erotic scenes scattered throughout history.
Starting from the very first, almost “revolutionary”, sex scene where the couple is drenched in menstrual blood that suddenly arrives. Scene that connects, at the end of the two intense hours, to another type of blood staining the floor of their apartment, to symbolize, without rhetoric or superficiality, an irreparable change in themselves and their relationship.
Phoebe Dynevor’s confirmation
Despite the excellent interpretation of Alden Ehrenreich – already appreciated in Solo: A Star Wars Story And Oppenheimer – Above all, the British actress born in 1995 shines in Chloe’s film. Daughter of a middle-class English couple, Phoebe learned her skills in theater, small parts in the cinema and TV series Younger created by Darren Star of Sex and the City.
Until, in 2020, the role that changed her life arrived, that of the romantic and naive Daphne, future Duchess of Hastings in the first season of Bridgerton.
In short, a role diametrically opposed to that of Emily in Fair play who the actress described as a character who «He underestimates himself and self-flagellates just to make Luke feel like a real man. I found myself very much in these dynamics, especially in the sentimental field. Then luckily I understood my mistakes and I hope it doesn’t happen again in my life.”
Coming soon alongside Diane Lane in the film Anniversary, the beautiful Phoebe has been romantically linked to the actor Cameron Fuller for a few monthsson of a famous horror film producer.
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