2023-10-14 17:58:09
How can a seemingly rock-solid relationship be poisoned if one member of the couple – who happens to be the woman – is promoted? Among other things, this is presented in one of the hit films of this year’s Sundance, a Everything is free, which talks about relationship dynamics and the pay gap, and what it says about company culture when they joke about getting a promotion with sex. Criticism.
A Everything is free It was presented at the Sundance Film Festival in early 2023 with great success, and accordingly a real bidding competition followed, from which Netflix finally emerged as the winner: the streaming company paid $20 million to land the erotic thriller on the platform. For a first-time writer-director, it is obviously flattering that his film is immediately involved in a million-dollar bidding war, which was also praised by critics for its sultry, sensitive, yet meat-cutting nature. Chloe Domont he has been in the business for a decade and a half, so far he has mainly directed short films and TV series, his filmography includes pieces such as Claricea In pursuit of billions or the Brilliant minds – knowing the latter two, it is not a coincidence that the feature film of the first addition also takes place in the world of New York suits.
Emily and Luke are a seemingly perfect couple: beautiful, young and head over heels in love. They have only one problem: they have to hide the latter, because they are both financial analysts at a high-profile Wall Street firm, where company rules prohibit romance at work. The two young people are so ambitious that they have been playing their role for two years now in order to get a high-profile position: they wake up next to each other in the morning, and then coolly ask each other in the elevator at work how the other’s weekend was. Their engagement could change the situation, but their career focus is clearly shown by the fact that it is not this, but a change of a completely different kind that throws them out of the well-established drama: due to the sudden vacancy of a higher position, both of them have the opportunity to advance. While there are preliminary rumors that Luke is better off, Emily ends up getting the job, which gradually but surprisingly quickly destroys their dreamy relationship.
A Everything is free he talks about several extremely topical issues:
about the power dynamics of relationships, women’s and men’s roles, the position of women in the financial field, the gender pay gap.
The financial profession is the perfect breeding ground for all of this: a series of research proves that in no other profession is there such a difference in salaries between men and women as in the financial sector, but it also helps to understand the situation if we know that the New York Until 1967, women could not even be members of the stock exchange. And although this is a change from almost sixty years ago, and there are now plenty of women working in the field, it is still a very male-dominated sector, and this fact also permeates the corporate culture. Emily is the only woman at the investment firm who doesn’t stir up trouble until she gets promoted.
“You should switch genders,” says one male worker sarcastically when he learns of Emily’s promotion; in return, the woman adopts the behavior of her male colleagues as a specific coping strategy: she has fun in strip bars, flirts and tells dirty jokes. This is a perfect reflection of the contradiction that the film perfectly conveys: if a woman steps up, it is most certainly explained by using her femininity, but then she is expected to behave like a man.
And while the film also presents the prejudices related to this, it is primarily the relationship dynamics that play a greater role, and which Domont wrote with an extremely good sense. While at first we see a couple that sticks together through thick and thin, the fact that it is not the man, but the woman, gets the promotion in the seemingly rock-solid relationship. It’s also telling how they take it all as a couple: when rumors of Luke’s success arrive, they’re both genuinely happy, but when Emily gets the appointment, she barely dares to tell her fiance, she breaks free, and Luke congratulates her with a face like he would on a particularly repulsive gift you have to take a good picture.
It hurts the man’s pride that his fiancee will also be his boss, and apparently the appointment was indeed justified, as she understands her job much better, which hurts the man’s ego more and more spectacularly. Being an erotic thriller, the ever-shifting power struggle is also reflected in sexuality: their previously bubbly sex life also suffers from a crisis, Luke not only feels deprived of his masculinity at work, but he can no longer perform in bed. As the man’s self-confidence sinks deeper and deeper, the situation between the two of them escalates both in their private lives and at work.
Netflix
A Everything is free a film of subtle, yet very emphatic parallels: Luke first kneels in front of Emily to ask for her hand with a veiled look, and then to answer as a sinner for his petty behavior. When he first hears that his boss asked the woman out at night, he first worries that the man harassed the woman, later he attacks that Emily must have slept with him in exchange for the promotion. There is blood at the beginning of the film during a sensationally bizarre sex scene, after which the couple share a conniving laugh, and blood at the end when they can only sob. At first they fall passionately for each other, at the end the man grabs his bride’s hair with a completely different purpose. With these parallels, Domont masterfully outlines the anatomy of a relationship poisoned by pettiness and overriding ambition.
A character drama of this kind, based on two actors, would be worthless without great actors: Alden Ehrenreich proves once again that it’s time to forget about the Han Solo blam, a Bridgertontransferred from Phoebe Dynevor and he also does an excellent job of being a broken but breaking analyst. THE Everything is free it is clearly the latter’s film, which brings his point of view closer to the viewer with an undisclosed purpose. Despite this, Emily is far from being a victim, her actions – if not nearly as much as the man’s – are also questionable.
Netflix
A Everything is free a particularly promising directorial debut, which is less of an erotic thriller and more of a well-constructed character drama with some erotica. With carefully selected moments, it shows the collapse of a relationship at the altar of a career, why it is difficult for women in the corporate world. But the best thing is that the sarcastic comments like “the commissioner brushed up against the boss for the promotion” are not simple jokes, but point to the problem of the perception of women in the labor market on a systemic level.
Fair Play, 113 minutes, 2023. Available on Netflix. 24.hu: 8/10
#promoted #youre #woman #expect #act #man