Three unproven talents are at the helm of Fair Play but it plays out as a project well beyond its talents’ collective experience. While there are issues with how the film ends, for the preceding hour and 50 minutes, there isn’t really anything to complain about. It is fast-paced, but not so fast-paced we can’t keep up, the film balances its themes very well and diversifies its characters, including the minor ones, that make them feel memorable.
To begin with, the pace of the film feels as if it shouldn’t work, because there is essentially no time to breathe as we watch it. However, this is precisely the reason why it does work, because the film makes us feel as if we understand the speed at which a stock broker lives their life. There is no interest in simply letting us be a spectator of the events, wanting us to feel as if we are also on a rollercoaster, like these men and women. Therefore, when we reach an ending that can feel out of place, on the other hand, it feels fitting given that there isn’t too many conclusions the film could reach other than a terrible one. The film doesn’t entirely leave this ending unexpected as we see what happens to two characters when they are fired from the company, and what type of breakdown we should expect from this.
The film makes us feel as if we understand the speed at which a stock broker lives their life.
On the topic of the characters, the themes that the film uses to demonstrate what their lives look like, are perfect, and feel completely natural to the story that we are being told. The main out-of-work hobby is sex, and the film spends a lot of time on this topic. The high intensity and high stress environment of the office, seems to be mirrored outside of it and the film paints a picture of these young stock brokers as being obsessed with pursuing those things that can give them the same rush that making a good stock trade can get them; sex, alcohol, money. As the central relationship begins to fall apart, the sex is soon replaced by alcohol and with it, Luke is replaced too. These themes are used pretty well to show that the priorities of both Emily and Luke are changing over time as they begin to grow distant. This is a valuable way of showing this distance rather than just telling us they are distant. As Emily grows in power and wealth, she also has the time to party and drink and whilst Luke delves deeper into his work in an attempt to reach her level, he cannot understand why she chooses to do these things, leading her to misunderstand as to why he cares in the first place.
For something so steeped in ambiguity and mutual responsibility to end so one-sided is disappointed, but to be expected for a film of this nature
I was pleasantly surprised at how the minor characters weren’t simply shoehorned in and made to feel unnecessary to the plot by way of making them generic, both in appearance and what lines they were given. In fact, Rory (played by Sebastian de Souza) is a memorable character because of his dress sense as it is clear that he cares about how he looks in the office but yet this is never actually articulated. Similarly, Rich Sommer’s character Paul is remembered mainly because of his witty one-liners that are enough to dislike him. It's easy for characters like this to fall by the wayside in a relationship-driven drama, so there’s real credit here to Domont for making sure they didn’t.
To close this, it is worth mentioning that the ending does ruin the film’s ambiguity of who’s in the wrong for the falling apart. The feminist message that the film is trying to tell would probably be stronger if the film decided its audience would be smart enough to come to that conclusion for themselves. For something that is so steeped in ambiguity and mutual responsibility to end so one-sided is pretty disappointing, but equally it should probably be expected from a film of this nature, that the writers and director would feel the need to choose a side in the end.
