Sundance Goes Wild With Sexy Corporate Thriller ‘Fair Play’

Park City, Utah — the fire emoji was common in tweets about the new corporate thriller “Fair Play,” which premiered Friday at the Sundance Film Festival.

The film follows two ambitious analysts at a competitive hedge fund, played by “Bridgerton”‘s Phoebe Dynevo and “Solo”‘s Alden Ehrenreich , they are also in a passionate secret relationship. A couple of hot scenes herald the return of the erotic thriller.

Film historian Karina Longworth, whose podcast “You Gotta Remember This,” recently delved into the 1980s erotic thriller moment, tweeted: “It’s the 2020s It works like Fatal Attraction did in the late ’80s.”

The film’s writer and director, Chloe Dormont, said she didn’t intend to make an erotic thriller per se.

But “I do intend to make a thriller about gender power dynamics in relationships that happen to be highly sexual,” Domont told The Associated Press in Park City on Saturday. “I think the execution of that intent ended up subverting the erotic-thriller genre.”

Dynevor, her second film role, said that when she read Domont’s script, she saw herself and many women she knew in her character Emily, who seemed to be the only woman in the company. She’s even more aware of this when she gets a promotion over Ehrenreich’s Luke.

“How she navigates work life in a male-dominated industry and how she navigates her relationships and, you know, in many ways she has to make herself smaller in order to make other people feel comfortable , I can understand that.” .

Ehrenreich’s character comes from a more privileged background than Emily. He was Ivy League educated and expected a certain level of success. But he also rolled his eyes at the casual misogyny of his colleagues, and supported Emily’s promotion, at least initially.

“I think he’s a little bit distant from the rest of the office. He’s not quite in that boys’ club,” Ehrenreich said.

“One of the things that I really love about this movie, and I think what’s sometimes lacking in stories that deal with these kinds of issues, is understanding the context, the system, the culture in which all of this is happening,” he continued. “It’s not about whether a person is good or bad. We are all deeply influenced by our environment and our aspirations within that environment.”

The film has already stirred up a gender debate among those who have seen it, as Domont makes sure to never go the cliché route with her character. The audience’s sympathy might even shift from scene to scene between Luke and Emily. Dynevor was firmly on Emily’s side throughout the script reading and filming, but that changed when she saw the finished product.

“I see him and her more as culprits and victims of society than as if anyone is either bad or good,” she said.

Fair Play, which will be shown at the festival soon, is Domont’s directorial debut on the big screen. But high-grossing drama is no stranger to her: She also directed Showtime’s “Billions.”

“My interest in that world started with, you know, ‘Wall Street’ and ‘Working Girls’ and those movies,” Domont said. “But to me, it’s the stakes. You have high stakes, you have drama.”

“You make money one day and lose it the next day.  …You either live on a high and you think you are (expletive) or the next day you think you’re a worthless (expletive ),” Domont added. “What that does to a person, fluctuating between those highs and lows, I relate to the film industry. … I relate to what that environment does to a person.”

Serbia, who plays New York in the film, comes together quickly, but the three key players make sure to find time to create real intimacy between Ehrenreich and Dynevor.

“We had a few days of rehearsals, which I thought were very valuable, and you rarely do that,” Ehrenreich said. “It makes a huge difference, especially in a movie like this, where if two people are together, then the bulk of the movie is their relationship and their details.”

This involves improvising on Emily’s first day at the office, and the first time Luke tells her he loves her.

“It really felt like something was locked in,” Ehrenreich said. “It’s an amazing thing that almost every movie is worth fighting for, especially any movie that involves any kind of relationship.”

They also work with an intimacy coordinator to arrange sex scenes.

“Chloe is a phenomenal director who always pushes us to go further and further, which is just so exciting as an actor,” Dynevor said. “We all felt really safe doing that.”

The Sundance Film Festival runs until January 29th.

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Follow Associated Press film writer Lindsay Barr on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ldbahr.