Netflix’s Fair Play has plenty of sex, but it’s not an erotic thriller

Usually, when a movie is broadly mischaracterized, a studio has deliberately misrepresented it in marketing materials to broaden its appeal or just didn’t know how to make its real nature clear. However, in the case Fair Play — a tense, needling relationship drama currently streaming on Netflix — the marketers are off the hook. A wrongheaded narrative started to build around Chloe Domont’s debut feature when it first screened at the Sundance Film Festival back in January 2023, before Netflix even acquired it. Critics were convinced that Fair Play This film was the beginning of a new era for the genre. It’s nothing of the sort — and pretending that it is one hurts the actual movie.

Fair PlayThe film follows two young financial analysts working at a Wall Street Hedge Fund that’s small but very successful. Emily (Phoebe Dynevor, from Bridgerton) and Luke (Alden Ehrenreich of Solo: A Star Wars Story infamy) are madly in love, share an apartment, and get engaged in the movie’s opening minutes. But they take separate trains to work, where they pretend they don’t know each other, so they don’t fall afoul of company policy. They expect Luke to get promoted, but when Emily is chosen instead, awkwardness begins to curdle into resentment — and then worse.

Fairness to critics Fair Play is an erotic thriller, it does have some echoes of the subgenre’s sleazy 1980s and ’90s heyday. In movies like Indecent ProposalThe following are some examples of how to get started: Disclosure — and probably some others that didn’t star Demi Moore — this kind of battle-of-the-sexes workplace framing was common, in tandem with an aspirational, thrusting, yuppie milieu and an obligatory twist of deception. Fair PlayThere are also a few big and bracingly honest sex scenes, something that is rare to find in feature films today, but was quite common then. The similarities stop there. The sex is exactly where the similarities end.

Image: Netflix

Fair Play has sex in it, but it isn’t a sexy movie, by Domont’s design. Instead, it’s intimate — at first in an exciting and romantic way, then in a way that’s claustrophobic and troubling. The film focuses on its two main characters, capturing them with zoom lenses or studying them closely in close-up. And it stays in their heads throughout, especially Emily’s.

But the sexual attraction between them isn’t the subject of the movie at all. It’s a fact of their relationship, clearly stated from the start. For most of the movie’s running time, though, attraction rarely comes into their complex, developing power dynamic. Unless you count Luke’s sulky refusals to get it on. Emily makes a joke proposal to Luke, which he turns down, and then throws in Emily’s face in an inversion of the #MeToo feminist politics.

Eventually, sex will reenter the relationship. In the worst possible way. But sex isn’t a motivating factor for either of them: They’re driven by self-image, success, and money. A good erotic novel (like Basic Instinct) is often about these things too, but these elements are subsumed in and expressed through sex and/or sexual jealousy, which should be the characters’ driving force. (And to some extent, the viewers’ driving force, too — these are usually consciously titillating movies, while Fair Play very much isn’t.)

Photo: Sergej Radovic/Netflix

For an erotic mystery, it’s essential to have a heated and sexy environment, as well as a feeling that the characters are only thinking about sex. That’s how a movie like last year’s trashy Patricia Highsmith adaptation Deep WaterThe, by erotica-thriller baron Adrian Lyne could be much sexier, and more in line with the genre traditions than Fair Play, Although Deep Water features less actual sex.

There’s reason why even sharp critics are mislabeling Fair Play. The erotic thriller, once the least popular of all commercial films, is now enjoying a revival and revaluation thanks to the influence of influential critics like Wesley Morris, Karina Langworth, who have been releasing a series hilarious, fascinating and horny audio podcasts. It’s a fun bandwagon, and it’s natural to want to jump on it — particularly in the context of the strangely sex-free modern moviegoing experience. (Although that’s started to change, even since Fair Play’s Sundance debut: Films like Ira Sachs’ hypnotic Passages and, reportedly, Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor ThingsEven Christopher Nolan is joining in the fun.

Fair Play’s mislabelling is only a shame if it obscures what Domont actually achieved with the movie. It’s a sharp, ambiguous, trenchant film, with superb performances from Dynevor and Ehrenreich, and a menacing turn from Eddie Marsan as their boss. Ehrenreich in particular is brave in this pathetic part that forces him to reverse the path he was on before someone cast him as Harrison Ford’s younger self.

When? Fair Play isn’t a thriller, it is thrilling to watch, especially in its volatile, horrifying final half-hour, which feels like it could go anywhere. In this movie’s airless, greedy, transactional world, toxic dynamics around gender and power set the rules. Sex doesn’t stand a chance.

Fair PlayNetflix has the latest episodes available.