South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
Domont didn’t set out to upend erotic thriller genre in ‘Fair Play’
“Fair Play,” which recently debuted at the Sundance Film Festival, follows two ambitious analysts at a cutthroat hedge fund, played by “Bridgerton’s” Phoebe Dynevor and “Solo’s” Alden Ehrenreich, who are also in a passionate and secret relationship.
Several steamy scenes had some at the premiere in Park City, Utah, declaring the return of the erotic thriller. Chloe Domont, who wrote and directed the film, said she didn’t set out to make an erotic thriller, per se.
But “I did set out to make a thriller about gender power dynamics within a relationship that happens to be highly sexual,” Domont said at the festival. “I think the execution of that intention ended up flipping the erotic thriller genre on its head.”
Dynevor said that when she read Domont’s script, she saw herself and a lot of women she knows in her character, Emily, who seems to be the sole female at the company. She’s made even more aware of this when she gets promoted over Ehrenreich’s Luke.
“How she navigates work life in a very maledominated industry and how she navigates her relationship and, you know, in many ways has to make herself smaller in order to make other people feel comfortable, I could relate to that,” Dynevor said.
Ehrenreich’s character comes from a more privileged background than Emily. He’s Ivy Leagueeducated and expects a certain amount of success. But he also rolls his eyes at the casual misogyny of his co-workers and, at least at first, is supportive of Emily’s ascent.
“One of the things that I really liked about the movie that I think sometimes is lacking from stories that take on issues like this is understanding the background and the system and the culture that all of that is taking place in,” Ehrenreich said. “It’s not on one individual being a good person or a bad person. We’re all highly influenced by our environment and the ambitions that we have within that environment.”
Domont makes sure to never go the cliche route with her characters. Audience sympathies may even shift between Luke and Emily from scene to scene. Dynevor was firmly on Emily’s side in reading the script and during filming, but when she watched the finished product, something changed.
“I kind of saw it more as him and her being a culprit of the society and a victim of the society, as opposed to, like anyone was a baddie or a goodie,” she said.
“Fair Play” — which sold to Netflix in a $20 million deal at the festival after sparking a bidding war
— is Domont’s directorial debut on the large screen. But high-finance drama is not new for her: She has helmed episodes of Showtime’s “Billions” too.
“My interest in that world starts from, you know, ‘Wall Street’ and ‘Working Girl’ and like those movies,” Domont said. “But for me it’s the stakes. You have high stakes, you have drama.”
The three key players made sure to carve out time to establish an authentic intimacy between Ehrenreich and Dynevor.
“We did a few days of rehearsal that I thought were really valuable, and it’s so rare you get to do that,” Ehrenreich said. “It makes such a huge, huge difference, especially in a movie like this, if two people have been together and so much of the movie is their relationship and the details of that.”
That involved improvisations of Emily’s first day at the office and the first time Luke tells her he loves her. “It really felt like it really kind of locked something in,” Ehrenreich said. “That’s a magical thing that is worth fighting for on almost every movie, especially any movie that deals with, you know, a relationship of any kind.”
They also worked with an intimacy coordinator.
“Chloe is such a phenomenal director and was always pushing us to go further and further, which was such a thrill as an actor,” Dynevor said. “And we both felt really safe to do so.”