Fair Play is a thriller that follows a young couple’s relationship that devolves after one is passed over for a promotion for the other. Starring Phoebe Dynevor as Emily and Alden Ehrenreich as Luke, Fair Play starts as a sexy dream but becomes an uncomfortable nightmare by the end.
Fair warning if you’re going to watch this movie, there are scenes of abuse, physical, emotional, and sexual. If those make you feel uncomfortable, I’d tread carefully.
For this movie to work, the connection between Dynevor and Ehrenreich has to be rock solid, and boy did they nail it. Alden Ehrenreich has so much natural charisma and Dynevor matched it. Starting with Ehrenreich, seeing a promotion that he thought was his go-to fiance is devastating, given they both work for a cutthroat hedge fund. His slow descent into insecurity is handled incredibly, from small mannerism shifts to outwardly assaulting Emily.
He does so much acting with just his eyes and facial expressions that tell his whole tale. When Emily offers to help Luke get the next promotion, he feigns his appreciation but his eyes scream that he hates being patronized. Seeing this after seeing Priscilla, there are some comparisons to how he and Jacob Elordi both masked their aggressions until they boiled over. It becomes terrifying to see him raise his voice and get unhinged.
For Dynevor, she is equally awesome. She recognizes almost immediately that his male ego was crushed by her promotion and does her best to help until she can’t. But when he gets aggressive, she doesn’t back down at all. It’s that resilience that makes the back-and-forths uncomfortably real. Even in the face of the supporting cast throwing her shade, she still stands up for herself and emasculates them. She is an absolute powerhouse and definitely elevates Fair Play to a new level.
It becomes clear that Luke is incapable of taking any sort of accountability for all the things he does to Emily. He refuses to apologize for trying to ruin her career and assaulting her and she does not let that slide one bit. The ending reaffirms the power struggle presented throughout the movie always tilted her way, no matter how abusive Luke got.
The atmosphere of Fair Play is very fast-paced, kind of echoing the environment that they work in. I liked the motif of the morning routines throughout the movie. They have to hide their relationship from work, so they leave the same apartment and take two different paths. As the story progresses, Emily is the one being picked up while Luke is the one who has to take the train in. While thematically it made sense, it also helped show the divide in what seemed to be a healthy relationship.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Fair Play was great, as we become a fly on the wall watching a relationship deteriorate. The movie is fast-paced and engaging, but Phoebe Dynevor’s and Alden Ehrenreich’s performances were more than enough to keep me engaged. It is incredibly stressful to watch and I could feel the anxiety boil over in both characters. This was a good watch I’d recommend.
