FILM 
MOVIE REVIEW
Fatal Attraction **½
by Ed Gonzalez on April 14, 2002 Jump to Comments (1) or Add Your Own
Dan Gallagher (Michael Douglas) goes playing in the Meat Packing District with Alex Forrest (Glenn Close) when his goody-two-shoes wife leaves for the weekend. Not one to be ignored, Alex goes psycho-bitch when the wife returns and Dan ends their affair. Sure, Alex may be little more than a bunny-boiling stalker and James Dearden's screenplay is rather unconcerned with the details of her psychosis but Fatal Attraction is still notable for Close's resilient, complex performance. There's no subtlety to Dearden's words ("If looks could kill," "I love animals," and "I'm a great cook") though Close creates a history's worth of bottled-up repression with her every gesture (the twitch of her lips, the deadness of her stare). Director Adrian Lyne is an underrated visualist. Here he does fabulous things with layers and Howard Atherton's anemic, unnerving soft-lighting, not to mention Puccini's Madame Butterfly. Still, without the film's original ending (where Alex's suicide was set to the opera), the musical reference is lost amid the film's existing, audience-pleasing showdown between jilted fling and courageous wife. Fatal Attraction is less an all-encompassing comment on females in general than it is a startling reminder of Close's ability to give a physical face to the subtext of one woman's inner torment. While Alex's behavior seems possible, Lyne's fabulous camera crawls and Close's frozen stares have never been able to fully compensate for Dearden's shoddy attention to character history.
- Director(s): Adrian Lyne
- Screenplay: James Dearden, Nicholas Meyer
- Cast: Michael Douglas, Gleen Close, Anne Archer, Ellen Hamilton Latzen, Stuart Pankin, Ellen Foley, Fred Gwyne, Meg Mundy, Tom Brennan, Lois Smith
- Distributor: Paramount Pictures
- Runtime: 117 min.
- Rating: R
- Year: 1987
Comments
- No-Personality on January 7, 2011, 05:56 PM
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I love this movie. Always have. To me, regardless of the fact that Alex knows he's married when they begin the affair, this will always be a movie about monogamy. I believe in it. And, damn it- Roseanne agrees with me: "Okay, what about 'Baby, Baby, Don't Get Hooked On Me'? He tells her that he'll use her and then he'll just set her free. Use me- I'll set you on fire, you bastard." If nothing else, this felt like the first movie where the guy couldn't get away with playing cool no matter how non-threatening he was before she started pushing him around. There's something to be said about patterns in a culture where people don't consider others' feelings. Intentionally or not, I think this movie gets the message across that it matters how you treat people and you should expect any sexual relationship to come with attachments. And I think most of the creative people I truly admire have always been skeptical of that kind of free love and people who tell you not to want more.
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