Sundance review: 'Fair Play' is a high-end trash wallow, hiding a thin plot behind some violent sex scenes

Except for one strong performance, there’s little to find appealing in “Fair Play,” a lurid exercise in corporate backstabbing that disguises its thin plot with extravagantly nasty sex scenes.

Emily (Phoebe Dynevor, from “Bridgerton”) and Luke (Alden Ehrenreich, from “Solo”) are young, prosperous and very much in love — so much so that Luke proposes to Emily in the most awkward way possible (after sex in a bathroom at a relative’s wedding). Aside from family, though, they can’t tell anyone, because they work at the same high-stress New York financial firm, where the employees aren’t supposed to fraternize.

It’s the sort of place where millions can be made or lost with a single decision, and analysts like Emily and Luke are taking apart the data and making pitches to their managers — called PM’s — to inform those decisions. When one PM implodes after a stock purchase gone wrong, the big boss, Campbell (Eddie Marsan), has to promote a new one. And, despite a rumor that Luke will be the new PM, instead Campbell gives the job to Emily.

At first, Luke is congratulatory and supportive. But it’s not long before the late nights, the confabs with Campbell, and the pressures of answering to Emily as his boss start to grind on Luke’s masculinity.

Writer-director Chloe Domont — whose work directing episodes of “Ballers” and “Billions” prepared her for such fragile manhood — seems to argue that love, like Wall Street, is a place where there are no winners without losers. Whether this is true or not, it’s a depressing way to think about life, and this movie wallows in that depression, turning its lead characters more repulsive by the minute.

It doesn’t help that the mismatch of the lead actors is even wider than that of their characters. Dynevor is a stellar actress, and she finds gradations of rage and desire that poor Ehrenreich can’t begin to achieve. In “Fair Play,” it’s an unfair comparison between them.

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‘Fair Play’

★★

Playing in the U.S. Dramatic competition of the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Screens again Thursday, Jan. 26, 8:35 p.m., The Ray Theatre, Park City. Not rated, but probably R for strong sexual content, nudity, strong violence, drug use and language. Running time: 113 minutes.