Fair Play

At a high-tension investment firm where millions of dollars are on the line, every decision feels like life or death. And for Emily and Luke, a pair of junior analysts who happen to be secretly dating, their whole lives hinge on what happens at work. So when Emily snags the promotion it looked like Luke might get, their plan of mutually assured success is shaken. 

Fair Play tracks their ever-changing shifts in power and tests how far they’re willing to go to get to the top. With every next move, though, there are ramifications that ricochet through their personal lives. Success becomes intertwined with sex, and more acutely, gender, when Luke begins to feel emasculated by Emily’s wins. They teeter precariously on the knife’s edge between sex and violence, and a bubble of tension grows, threatening to pop.

The film explores workplace gender dynamics from a kaleidoscope of angles without coming down on a particular message. Emily and Luke are both cutthroat and flawed. There is plenty of critique of the boys’ club that is high finance, as Luke overhears the crass things his coworkers say about his fiancé when they think no one is listening. It’s also a true character study of one couple; a nicely small story that doesn’t fret too much with other characters, but rests squarely on the central conflict for the whole runtime. 

The thrill of watching Fair Play is following Emily and Luke’s moment-to-moment dynamic shifts. Their argument scenes are meaty and vibrant, sometimes edging on melodramatic, but the imagined stakes are felt. There’s an edge-of-your-seat propulsion to the way this film unfolds, with rarely a dull moment felt. It’s also a cautionary tale of male fragility, taking a commonplace anxiety of men being intimidated by women making more money than them, and taking it to worst-case-scenario ends.