Abhiroop Das
Helmed by Thea Sharrock, Netflix’s ‘Ladies First‘ begins with advertising giant Damien Sachs at the seeming peak of his life. With all the money, fame, and sexual freedom that he can wish for, Damien leads his entire life without any self-reflection whatsoever, even when his employee, Alex Fox, calls him out on his male chauvinism. This attitude is short-lived, however, as a series of incidents transports Damien into a parallel world that is run by women. In this gynarchy, men are the oppressed class, and Damien is tasked with climbing the social ladder from scratch in order to claim any sort of freedom. Based on the French title ‘Je Ne Suis Pas Un Homme Facile,’ this satirical comedy movie ends with Damien getting the lesson of his life and a chance to put it to good use. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Ladies First Plot Synopsis
‘Ladies First’ begins with Damien Sachs, an advertising agent, closing a landmark deal with Guinness by lying about hiring a female creative director as an empowering measure. With time running fast, he promotes the first woman he can find from the company, who, in this case, turns out to be Alex Fox, an advertising genius. However, when the time to make plans and pitch ideas actually comes, Damien makes it clear that she is merely a figurehead who has been hired for the optics. With that, Damien unleashes all of his sexism, showing how little he respects Alex or women in general. When she decides to quit, however, Damien has no choice but to run after her, during which he runs straight into a pole and drops down unconscious.
When Damien opens his eyes, he finds himself in a parallel reality where women hold all the power. While the people in his life are all still there, they now have vastly different roles and characteristics. Felicity, who is the receptionist in the real world, is the CEO of the company here, with Alex working as the next-in-command, where Damien used to be. He, on the other hand, now has Alex’s life in all of its lows and very few highs, which means that he has to now face an inverted form of sexism, where men are the ones who are discriminated against at every turn, relentlessly sexualized, and hardly allowed to succeed. The only person who understands Damien’s dilemma here seems to be an unhoused Pidgeon Man, who claims that the only way out is to climb the social ladder and hold the top position in one’s field.
Damien, who was already on course to become the CEO, believes that he will have an easy time getting back to where he was, but that turns out to be far from the case. In this reality, he is forced to shave his body hair, be on a strict diet and aesthetic framework, and often just smile at and approve some of the worst decisions made by his bosses. Though he even tries to sleep with Felicity to get a promotion, she dies before they can have sex. Glenda, who is the leader of the chair in this world, is asked to choose between Alex and Damien as Felicity’s successor, and she ultimately decides on the former. However, this is not before Alex and Damien have sex and then angrily part ways. Though he launches a wrongful termination lawsuit, he never brings up their sex because of how he truly feels about Alex. Before she can comment on his feelings, however, Glenda informs him that he’s getting the CEO job, which in turn triggers the inevitable.
Ladies First Ending: Do Damien and Alex Fall in Love? Does Alex Become the Director?
‘Ladies First’ ends with Damien returning to the real world with a fresh perspective, just in time to apologize to Alex and bring her back on board. The question that is largely left unresolved is whether the two can rekindle a romance in this world, away from the context of the parallel reality. In the final sequence, we see Alex resuming her post as the company’s creative director, not just nominally, but with actual decision-making power. Consequently, it’s her ad campaign for Guinness, and not the misogynistic concoction of Damien and team, that makes it to print, unexpectedly turning out to be a masterstroke. As Guinness’ stock prices soar, so does Alex’s popularity, and by the end, she and Damien are celebrated as two titans of advertisement standing on equal footing.
Though the final montage effectively illustrates Alex and Damien’s professional rise as a team, it hardly shines a light on their personal relationship, and if at all, it advances into something special. While the lack of hints might just be a confirmation that the ship didn’t sail, we cannot deny that Damien now has real and potent feelings for her. These feelings, if they can be called love, are strong enough that Damien earlier refused to come back to the real world, even when that had been his goal all along. Now that he’s back in his own reality, he cannot help but feel defamiliarized yet again. A large contributor to this is memory, or the lack of it, as Alex simply has no recollection of ever being as fiercely competitive or romantically involved with Damien as she is in the parallel world.
Though Damien is unable to extract anything tangible from the parallel reality back to his own, he does come out as a vastly transformed man. Having experienced a version of systemic discrimination firsthand, he becomes far more conscious than before of how his actions enable or proliferate sexism, and what he needs to do to stop that. However, the key to wooing Alex isn’t turning into a new leaf over the course of a few hours; rather, it’s allowing her to be her best self, without any personal or professional hindrances. If there’s one thing the parallel world firmly establishes, it’s that Damien and Alex are true equals, which means that their potential romance is also bound to follow that principle going forward.
Is the Parallel World Real? Is Fred Trapped There?
While we never get a clear answer as to whether the parallel world is real or a figment of Damien’s imagination, many details from the movie point more towards the former interpretation. While it is true that his connection to this alternate reality begins and ends with a concussion, there are simply too many things that Damien gets to know in that time that he could not have known beforehand. To begin with, not only does Damien know the name of Alex’s daughter in the real world, but he also recognizes her pet cat as his own in the parallel world. The fact that he has no idea whose cat it is for much of the movie suggests that this parallel world exists independent of his knowledge or control, and he merely glitches into it.
Though there are simply too many elements from the parallel world that only make sense if it’s interpreted as a real plane, that still doesn’t explain the exact mechanism through which Damien makes the jump. It appears that the physical fall in this case means to symbolically pull someone down from a state of hubris and force them to get back to the top through a range of new and matured perspectives. With that reading, it makes sense that one must get to the top of the social ladder to find their way out, as in doing so, they already become sensitized to things they were ignoring in their previous life. For ex-CEO Fred, however, this means bad news, as the final bits of the movie suggest that he, too, has found his way into the parallel world.
Characters like the Pidgeon Man, who seems to have made peace with the alternate reality, show that not everyone necessarily completes their arc and makes it back home, which in turn puts Fred into a very precarious position. His presence in this world, however, also serves as definitive proof that it’s real, and also that the Pidgeon Man is himself the omniscient narrator. Given that he is able to recount the full story of the movie to Fred, there’s a chance that the old man might change his ways as well, and earn his way back to reality, this time hopefully a better human being.
Why Does Alex Remember the Pen?
Though the real world and its parallel rendition are separated by the concussion mechanism, one scene in particular comes close to shattering that wall. When apologizing to Alex and trying to get her back to the company, Damien accidentally drops the pen from the suite that he’s been carrying around all this time, and seeing it triggers a déjà vu moment for Alex. Though she has no way to put detail into this vision, we recognize the pen as the same one that Damien gave to the other Alex after they had sex. While this not only means that objects from one reality can be brought to another, it also means that the memories of these two worlds are themselves linked on some abstract level.
Alex is unable to pin down the memory of the pen only because that exact series of events hasn’t happened to her in this reality. That, however, doesn’t stop the emotions from being carried over, which sets up a precedent for her potentially regaining her feelings for Damien. At the same time, there’s also a chance that Damien himself picks up on Alex’s brief reaction and recognizes what it means for her to have faint memories. As such, his next move might be to recreate key moments from their dynamic in the hopes of triggering her parallel memories to step in and reunite them. However, it’s equally possible that this déjà vu is just a tiny blip in the space-time fabric, and this Alex might never fully remember why she feels a certain way about Damien.
What Happens to Glenda, Felicity, and Ruby?
Damien’s positive evolution does not limit its effects to how he interacts with Alex, but also the larger cast of the story. It’s only after returning to the real world after the entire parallel saga that Damien realizes how awful life has been for the women he interacts with on a daily basis. As such, his first move after coming back involves a heavy bit of course correction, starting with getting Ruby the promotion she deserves. Even Damien, who is ever-so-dependent on her for his everyday activities, realizes what she is capable of all by herself, and his experience of working solo gives him the confidence to handle things by himself, and let Ruby soar far greater heights.
Damien responds similarly to his floor receptionist, Felicity Chase, who, in the parallel world, passes away due to an intense orgasm. In this world, however, she has no choice but to show up to work for a position she has held for more than two decades. Damien, now aware of just how much more Felicity is capable of, promises to be more sensitive to her, not just as her boss but also as her friend. This holds even more true for Glenda, who in this reality is a janitor. While Damien doesn’t intend to change the system overnight, what he can promise, and ultimately delivers, is an undying appreciation of the women in his life and how they have faced all hurdles in life and emerged victorious.
Read More: Where Was Ladies First Filmed? All Shooting Locations
You must be logged in to post a comment.