EQUITY

Unfortunately, the male characters don’t hold up anywhere near as well, pretty much all of them now fulfilling the roles of caricatures. It’s obviously a better imbalance than what we’re used to, but when so much work has been put into making the women so fascinating, it’s a pity that same specificity doesn’t apply to the men, making Fox’s screenplay often feel imbalanced. It also robs the film of its powerful and potent comments on sexism in a male-dominated workplace when the men are uniformly either awful or just plain dumb.

Fox’s screenplay is indebted to Menon’s slick and controlled direction, which keeps the rhythm and tension tuned just right. ‘Equity’ is a handsome film, but not without emotional resonance. It could easily have resembled a TV movie, but Menon adds a cinematic flair to it, capturing both the glamour of Wall Street and the grit of it, the unforgiving hours and its compromise to personal relationships. In many ways, her direction is one of the real highlights of this film, and she's definitely a director to keep an eye on in the future.

Because of the imbalance in the screenplay, the performances from the women are far stronger than the men, mostly because of the calibre of talent the parts attract. It’s terrific seeing Anna Gunn on the big screen, and her performance as Naomi is detailed, unforgiving and highly intelligent. She balances between being the protagonist and antagonist for so much of the film, but her convictions and moral compass are iron-proof, both to her advantage and disadvantage, and Gunn ensures that her humanity is always bubbling under the surface. That streak of humanity makes Sarah Megan Thomas’ performance as Erin quietly devastating, as she finds herself pitted against Naomi and forced into terrible decisions to get what she wants. She quickly goes from a face in the background to a driving force in the film. Holding the moral compass is Alysia Reiner as Samantha, who really gets to stretch her acting chops after her small part on ‘Orange is the New Black’, injecting the film with much-needed spirit and energy. The women wipe the floor with the men in this film, all uniformly forgettable and uninteresting. James Purefoy in particular just seems to be playing a cartoon villain, and it’s hard to get excited about his performance when he can’t spar well enough with the women.

‘Equity’ ends up being a far more interesting film than you see coming. Where Meera Menon and Amy Fox leave us is a moral quagmire, where you’re left without heroes or villains, forced to question which course of action you would take yourself. The final act is quietly bold and unexpected, leaving you a little haunted and appropriately uncomfortable. That’s probably a good description of ‘Equity’ as a whole - a clever little film that balances its flaws with flashes of intelligence and conviction. Best of all, it’s an intelligent film made by women about women, and that’s always something worth celebrating.