Fatal Attraction

Fatal Attraction; drama / thriller, USA, 1987; D: Adrian Lyne, S: Michael Douglas, Glenn Close, Anne Archer, Ellen Hamilton Latzen

Dan Gallagher is a successful lawyer and has everything in life: a luxurious apartment, good job, wife Beth, daughter Ellen and a dog. He goes out to parties with his friends, where he meets the mysterious Alex. When his wife and child take a trip outside town for a weekend in order to search for a house, Dan meets Alex again and invites her for dinner. Soon, the two of them start a passionate affair, but Dan still leaves her since he is married. But Alex starts bugging him with phone calls and tells him she is pregnant. When she kills their rabbit and kidnaps their daughter for a while, Dan admits everything to Beth and calls the police. Alex storms into their house and attacks Beth with a knife, so Dan kills her in self-defense.

During its premiere, "Fatal Attraction" stirred up quite a hype and shocked the audience with sex scenes which were unusually free for Hollywood. Ironically, in comparison to some other films today, these "scandalous" scenes seem rather timid and restrained - they consist only out of two minimalistic erotic moments (in kitchen and elevator) - but the movie is still memorable much more for its "ordinary" story about a possessive partner who does not want to let go of the other, even causing some film critics to interpret it as a hidden AIDS symbolism in it (Glenn Close's character Alex is actually an allegory for that virus that, after an careless, wild affair, bugs the hero and threatens him with death), which is why its audacity was rewarded with several nominations. The first half works brilliantly thanks to quiet details and observations (for instance, Alex is a victim of loneliness and even cuts her veins), but the second half collapses in form of a thriller, since it becomes a clumsy negation of all the events previously seen, mostly thanks to the banal ending. Alex simply cannot be the aggressor in the story, but the producers unfortunately played it safe and contrived, pushing her into a "villain", a forcing Dan (Michael Douglas) into a "victim", gerrymandering reality just to make it fit into "self-defense", which is why "Fatal Attraction" does not seem as fresh anymore. A bitter, sober ending where Dan actually faces consequences would have been a much better solution.

Grade:++