Featured Image Credit: Netflix
Topics: TV And Film, Netflix, Entertainment
Jess Hardiman
Netflix’s highly-anticipated new ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ thriller has finally landed, having already racked up a pretty respectable Rotten Tomatoes score following a limited release in cinemas last month.
Watch the trailer here:
You may be used to seeing Phoebe Dynevor sashaying about in Bridgerton, but she’s now starring in an edgy new Netflix flick, which is already being hailed ‘one of the shrewdest takes’ on the erotic thriller in recent years.
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It centres on a pair of financial analysts who are tied up in a relationship forbidden by the employer they both share, with the plot thickening when one of them lands an unexpected promotion.
A synopsis for Fair Play, which also stars Alden Ehrenreich, reads: “An unexpected promotion at a cutthroat hedge fund pushes a young couple's relationship to the brink, threatening to unravel far more than their recent engagement.”
The movie marks a clear departure for both Dynevor and Ehrenreich, who is best known for playing a young Han Solo in Solo: A Star Wars Story.
Director Chloe Domont said this was all part of the appeal, telling Netflix’s official fan site Tudum: “When I met with Alden and Phoebe for the roles, it was pretty instant that they were perfect for these characters.
“They’re incredibly strong versatile actors that can do anything. And also what excited me about it was that they had never done anything like this before. I love to cast against type.”
She said the story had been ‘burning inside’ of her, and felt like a tale she ‘couldn’t not tell’.
“I wanted to reckon with some unresolved feelings I had in the past, specifically dating men who I felt were threatened by either my ambition or any little bits of accomplishments,” Domont said, adding: “These dynamics should no longer be normalized.”
The film has already earned a not-too-shabby Rotten Tomatoes score of 87 percent – both among critics and for the audience score.
For comparison, the critics’ consensus on Fifty Shades of Grey was a measly 25 percent.
The Boston Globe’s Natalia Winkelman said Fair Play was ‘one of the shrewdest takes on the erotic thriller in recent memory’, while Stephanie Zacharek from TIME wrote: “This workplace psycho-romance traces the resentments that can asphyxiate a couple when one partner’s career escalates as the other’s falters, and it does so in the service of a bigger picture.”
Wendy Ide of the Observer, meanwhile, said the film was an ‘enjoyably lurid piece of classy-trashy psychological warfare’, which frankly sounds right up our street.
Watch Fair Play on Netflix now.