Jill's Film Festival Diary for Monday, April 16

Film: Fair Play

Future Screenings: No future screenings scheduled.

I actually like this year's festival trailer. From what I've observed, I think most people do. But it's been funny listening to audiences during it, as the Festival has progressed. The first couple of days, there was actually some pretty serious laughter. That gave way to polite chuckles, maybe a titter or two. By this late in the Festival, though, you can tell who's been catching a lot of movies, and who's catching his one-and-only film of the Festival. Little pockets of laughter erupt from the areas where those people are sitting. Those of us with all-access passes stay silent. It is possible to have seen too much of a good thing.

Fair Play
I was actually supposed to go to see Waiter with Pencopal last night, but she had a flat tire and I didn't want to schlep to the Ritz East in the rain when I had a perfectly good place to catch a Festival movie around the corner from my apartment. This was one of those films that I chose solely based on my proximity to the theater, and not out of any desire to actually see the movie itself. (Coincidentally, I ran into Editor Jim, who was planning on seeing Fair Play from the git-go.) Frankly, I'd had my doubts about the movie when I read the summary in the Festival program: "The film opens with a ferocious, 20-minute racquetball sequence that's pure cinema bravura, nearly perspiring testosterone and setting the tone for the series of set pieces that follow." My god, even reading that after the fact makes it sound like the kind of thing I usually run from.

But run, I did not. In fact, I didn't even fidget. And I'm a fidgety person when you put me in an uncomfortable seat for two hours. I guess I was just that sucked in by the film, which takes place, not in any offices (although the film's focus is primarily on workplace interaction), but instead while (to the best of my memory) rowing, golfing, running, canyoneering, weight-lifting, swimming, and, oh yeah, playing racquetball. It's a really interesting conceit—we've all heard how more business deals are sealed on the back nine than in the conference room—and one that works surprisingly well. We never know what these people do, or even where they do it (my guess was that they all worked at a law firm, but the film is intentionally ambiguous), so the drama is personally, rather than professionally, driven. Intensity and aggression is conveyed through athleticism. It's a strangely appropriate parallel to the working world, and as things go from clever black comedy to suspenseful man-versus-nature action, you can appreciate just how inventive and clever the filmmakers were when they came up with the plot of Fair Play. (Props also to the cinematographer, who had me at racquetball and kept my attention for the rest of the film, including with some really impressive shots during the canyoneering sequence.) To say much about the plot of the film would honestly be to detract from it, but I will say this: if this film had been made in America, the ending would never have passed tester audiences. Thank god it wasn't.
Festival rating: Very Good