I can empathize with Adrian Lyne’s Fatal Attraction in that I once knew of a female who took fertility drugs and welcomed unprotected sex in hopes of entrapping her future husband. Yet, for all of the would-be relevance and potent explorations upon gender relations that Lyne had going for him, his film becomes the conservative calling card for the Reagan Era as he issues his “Don’t-Screw-Around-on-Your-Wife” diatribe of escapist cinema, which winds up as a mere bookmark to Yuppie culture.
While his wife, Beth (Anne Archer) and nine year-old daughter, Ellen (Ellen Latzen), are away for the weekend looking at real estate and visiting relatives, Dan Gallagher (Michael Douglas) has an affair with Alex Forrest (Glenn Close). When Dan attempts to return to his family of nine years, believing that Alex intuitively understands the terms of their prohibited relationship, Alex begins to reappear more and more frequently in the Gallagher’s lives.
There is one vital scene in Fatal Attraction. It occurs when Dan is attempting to leave Alex’s apartment at the end of their weekend-long affair in order to make it back home before his family. Just as Dan says goodbye he realizes that, wham, Alex–for no apparent reason–has slashed her wrists. Of course, this is a desperate ploy by Alex to keep Dan around a few moments longer as well as an attempt to gain his sympathy but the scene, as vital as it was for Lyne to convey his vision, destroys the film.
Granted, it allows Lyne’s audience to know early on that the character of Alex is mentally unstable. If we didn’t have this brief glimpse into the character’s pathology, it would permit an ambiguity where we wouldn’t know who to root for because both characters would be set on even ground in our eyes upon Ellen and Beth’s return. As such, when we first spot the cuts on Alex’s wrists, this exonerates Dan in lieu of the fact that he cheated on his wife and changes the film from being a potential debate about gender relations to a digression into escapist horror thriller schlock that prohibits (or at least greatly restricts) feminist readings of the film.
(This isn’t to say that my suggestion of the direction in which the film could have been taken in the end all to the potential of the script but, considering the course which Lyne chose, he would have been wise to omit this scene, thus allowing said uncertainty to carry the viewer throughout.)
It is sad that Lyne decided to take the film in this direction because he posited all the signs of a great meditation upon the sexes until the unfortunate tell-all scene. At the open of the film, we have Dan and Ellen chatting between rooms as they get ready for a book release party as he relays messages between his wife and her friend who is speaking to Dan on the phone. Subtle miscommunication occurs as Dan mishears what his wife intents to wear to the event, as he translates “suit” to “dress” to her friend, thus implying a furtive disruption in their otherwise stable marriage. Shortly thereafter at an emergency meeting at Dan’s law office, the theme of infidelity is foreshadowed as he and his colleagues discuss the legitimacy of a Senator’s allegations that a book that Alex’s publisher has printed is a thinly veiled narrative depicting his affair with the author. Yet, as I previously mentioned, just as Dan and Alex’s affair comes to a premature close, Lyne eradicates everything he has built as the film not only leads to a clichéd horror ending but also misfires in the director consenting to rewrite the original ending which was foreshadowed in the inclusion of the Giacomo Puccini’s opera, Madame Butterfly. By not allowing Alex to commit suicide (the only direction that the film permits the citation of the opera to be utilized), the director now has an aesthetic loose end which he leaves dangling atop what now becomes a superfluous scene that merely takes up running time to no effective ends.
Almost as a recognition that the film had lost its critical momentum, Lyne even allows Dan to temporarily move out of his house at Ellen’s request after he reveals his affair to her (after a Hamletian pause which would have otherwise cut the running time by a quarter). However, I argue that this is a huge plausibility hole in that yes, Ellen is distraught and betrayed yet, with another woman in the picture, few cuckolded wives would permit their unfaithful mates out into the world knowing they could easily find refuge with “the other woman” atop the fact that Ellen has seen Alex’s instability firsthand and, with what we’ve been presented in the character of Dan’s wife, it seems unlikely that such a caring individual would permit her emotions, in lieu of what has recently been divulged to her, to permit her much-loved mate to be subjected to a psychopath’s jealous rage. (Of course, I also fault the production in this respect for the inclusion of a pet rabbit which we all know, without a doubt, is going to see a gruesome end before the close of the film.)
What remains is a reflection of the times. For many critics, Fatal Attraction is the key work of “Yuppie Horror,” that is, horror in which the characters house little potential for sympathy from their audience in that they have everything and even though the one of the few things that such figures can’t buy–fidelity–is breeched, no matter how devastating the event may be, we have trouble pitying such characters due to what they would be nonetheless left with as a result of their wealth (this is masterfully mocked in Mary Harron’s American Psycho, which not only satirizes such individuals and setting–Harron’s film takes place in New York and revolves around a power attorney who has it all–but also takes place in the year in which Lyne’s film was released). Yes, the film serves as a sociological signpost for the Me Generation and the Reagan Era but, considering all of the other missed opportunities which Lyne let slide, this is one of the few aspects of the work that remains as a consequence.
The quickest rebuttal to all I have criticized is that Adrian Lyne’s film was nominated for multiple Oscars. However, considering Fatal Attraction’s fellow nominees, I would retort that it was the bell-curve syndrome for Hollywood that year in that little of value crept out of the studios during that time, thus allowing the mediocre to rise to the top as a result. Admittedly, Fatal Attraction had a lot going for it. However, even if Lyne had permitted the film to realize its potential, I wonder how effective it would have been outside of perhaps merely being a solid effort.
Trivia tidbit: The production company obviously viewed the work as a horror piece from the get-go in that David Cronenberg was offered the director’s chair before Brian de Palma likewise turned it down (among twenty other directors) stating, rightfully, that the material was too imitative of Clint Eastwood’s Play Misty for Me which, as many have cited, more readily handles the ambiguity which Adrian Lyne unwisely closes the door upon.
-Egregious Gurnow
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
