Fair Play review: In this riveting thriller, business and pleasure don't mix

But Fair Play is no polemic or stuffy academic treatise. Domont’s sketching of characters is deep and convincing. She also has a smart sense of where and how to add pin-prick details (like the circumstances that informed Luke’s hiring) to scenes in a way that makes them entertaining and helps contribute to an escalating tautness.

If there are shortcomings, they mostly arrive in the third act. While the wandering into the politics of sexual instigation and recrimination feels inevitable, the way Domont attaches some of these elements to a separate moral awakening rings improbable and somewhat awkward. Moreover, high-volume discord tends to stand in for more sharply articulated unraveling. Apart from a cringe-inducing scene of Luke’s professional self-debasement and a well-crafted, stakes-raising ending that generally rights the ship, the screenplay feels like it hits a wall, and has nothing for its characters left to verbalize except surface-level thoughts and profanity.

The counterpoint to this assessment, of course, is that rage-fueled yelling is precisely how many arguments unfold, and so maybe it’s perfectly reflective of a relationship hitting its expiration date. Still, given the profiles of these characters, a viewer is left wanting more than, for example, a blowout which ends with one of them screaming and theatrically swigging vodka.

On the technical side, Domont (who cut her teeth in episodic television including Ballers, Shooter and Billions) impressively oversees a well-conceived package whose cool assurance mirrors the confidence which blooms in Emily. Dutch cinematographer Menno Mans, trading in slow-moving shots, a smartly contrasted lighting scheme, and framing that favors character over setting, helps summon a slightly nervous vibe.

Together with Domont and production designer Steve Summersgill, Mans takes an element that could be limiting (the movie was shot in Serbia), and turns it into an odd strength. Instead of the city becoming an ancillary character, Fair Play assertively snuffs out any misbegotten notion or accidental chance of the movie becoming yet another “New York story.” And the effect is richer; Fair Play is a film that feels very modern but not quite anchored to any specific year, and very American but also a little anonymous and reflective of the broader world.

In the end, is Fair Play a vivisection of masculine insecurity and gaslighting? A razor-sharp snapshot of the interpersonal collateral damage wrought by the rapaciousness of capitalism? A toxic relationship study? A good old-fashioned psychological thriller? Yes, it’s all of those things.

In a landscape in which even most independent films play things too safe, Fair Play is the relatively rare movie with both a distinctive personality and an eagerness to dig around in the real-world sandbox and ask questions for which it knows there is no single, pat set of answers. It never stops making moves, in a way which makes even its missteps feel refreshing.

Fair Play opens in theaters September 29 and on Netflix October 13