Fatal Attraction is a 1987 American psychological thriller film directed by Adrian Lyne and starring Michael Douglas, Glenn Close, and Anne Archer. The film centers on a married Manhattan man who has a weekend affair with a woman who refuses to allow it to end, resulting in emotional blackmail, stalking, and an ensuing obsession on her part. The film was adapted by James Dearden and Nicholas Meyer from an earlier 1980 short film by Dearden for British television, Diversion.
Fatal Attraction was a hit, finishing as the second highest-grossing film of 1987 in the United States and the highest-grossing film of the year worldwide. Critics were enthusiastic about the film, and it received six Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture (which it lost to The Last Emperor), Best Actress for Close, and Best Supporting Actress for Archer. Both lost to Cher and Olympia Dukakis, respectively, for Moonstruck.
id="Plot">Plot
Dan Gallagher (Michael Douglas) is a successful, happily married New York attorney living in Manhattan when he meets Alexandra "Alex" Forrest (Glenn Close), an editor for a publishing company, through business. While his wife, Beth (Anne Archer), and daughter, Ellen (Ellen Hamilton Latzen), are out of town for the weekend, he has a passionate affair with Alex. Though he thought it was understood to be a simple fling, she begins clinging to him.
Dan stays on a second unplanned evening with Alex in which she persistently asked him over. Dan explains to Alex later that he must go home, and disapproving of his early leave, she cuts her wrists in a suicide attempt. He helps her to bandage them and later leaves. He thinks the affair is forgotten, but she shows up at various places to see him. She waits at his office one day to apologize and invites him to a Madame Butterfly opera (which he has claimed is an opera favorite of his), but he politely turns her down. She then continues to telephone until he tells his secretary that he will no longer take her calls. She then phones his home at all hours, and then confronts him claiming that she is pregnant and plans to keep the baby. Although he wants nothing to do with her, she argues that he must take responsibility. She shows up at his apartment (which is for sale) and meets Beth, feigning interest as a buyer. Later that night, he goes to her apartment to confront her about her actions which results in a violent scuffle. In response, she replies that she will not be ignored.
Dan moves his family to Bedford, but this does not deter Alex. She has a tape recording delivered to him filled with verbal abuse. She stalks him in a parking garage, pours acid on his vehicle, and follows him home one night to spy on him, Beth, and Ellen from the bushes in their yard; the sight of their family life literally makes her sick to her stomach. Her obsession escalates further. Dan approaches the police to apply for a restraining order against her (claiming that it is "for a client"), to which the lieutenant claims that he cannot violate her rights without probable cause and that the adulterer has to own up to his adultery.
At one point, while the Gallaghers are not home, Alex kills Ellen's pet rabbit, and puts it on their stove to boil. After this, Dan tells Beth of the affair and Alex's supposed pregnancy. Enraged, she demands him to leave. Before he goes, Dan calls Alex to tell her that Beth knows about the affair. Beth gets on the phone and warns Alex that if she persists, she (Beth) will kill her. Without Dan and Beth's knowledge, Alex picks up Ellen at school and takes her to an amusement park, buying her ice cream as well as taking her on a roller coaster. Beth panics when she realizes that she does not know where Ellen is. She drives around frantically searching and rear-ends a car stopped at an intersection. She is injured and hospitalized. Alex later takes Ellen home, asking her for a kiss on the cheek. Following Beth's release from the hospital, she forgives Dan and they return home.
Dan barges into Alex's apartment and attacks her, choking her and coming close to strangling her. He stops himself, but as he does, she lunges at him with a kitchen knife. He overpowers her, but puts the knife down and leaves, with Alex leaning against the kitchen counter, smiling. He approaches the police about having her arrested, and they start searching for Alex to bring her in for taking Ellen.
Beth prepares a bath for herself and Alex suddenly appears, again with the kitchen knife. She starts to explain her resentment of Beth, nervously fidgeting (which causes her to cut her own leg) and then attacks her. Dan hears the screaming, runs in, wrestles Alex into the bathtub, and seemingly drowns her. She suddenly emerges from the water, swinging the knife. Beth, who went searching for Dan's gun, shoots her in the chest, killing her. The final scene shows police cars outside the Gallaghers' house. As Dan finishes talking with the cops, he walks inside, where Beth is waiting for him. They embrace and proceed upstairs as the camera focuses on a picture of them and Ellen.
Alternate ending
Alex Forrest was originally scripted to die by suicide at the film's end by slashing her throat with the knife Dan had left on the counter, so as to make it appear that Dan had murdered her. After seeing her husband being taken away by police, Beth finds a revealing cassette tape that Alex sent Dan in which she threatened to commit suicide. Upon realizing Alex's intentions, Beth takes the tape to the police, which acquits Dan of the murder. The last scene shows, in flashback, Alex committing suicide by slashing her throat while listening to Madame Butterfly.
This resulted in a three-week reshoot for the action-filled sequence in the bathroom and Alex's death by gunshot. Her shooting by Beth juxtaposes the two characters, with Alex becoming the victim and Beth taking violent action to protect her family.
In the 2002 Special Edition DVD, Close comments that she had doubts re-shooting the film's ending, because she believed the character would "self-destruct and commit suicide". However, Close gave in on her concerns, and filmed the new sequence after having fought against the change for two weeks. The film was initially released in Japan with the original ending. The original ending also appeared on a special edition VHS and LaserDisc release by Paramount in 1992, and was included on the film's DVD release a decade later.
Cast
- Michael Douglas as Dan Gallagher
- Glenn Close as Alexandra "Alex" Forrest
- Anne Archer as Beth Gallagher
- Ellen Hamilton Latzen as Ellen Gallagher
- Stuart Pankin as Jimmy
- Ellen Foley as Hildy
- Fred Gwynne as Arthur
- Meg Mundy as Joan Rogerson
- Tom Brennan as Howard Rogerson
- Lois Smith as Martha
- Mike Nussbaum as Bob Drimmer
- J. J. Johnston as O'Rourke
- Michael Arkin as Lieutenant
- Jane Krakowski as Christine
Reception
After its release, Fatal Attraction engendered much discussion of the potential consequences of infidelity. Feminists, meanwhile, did not appreciate what they felt was the depiction of a strong career woman who is at the same time psychopathic (although Forrest is more widely considered to be representative of borderline personality disorder). Feminist Susan Faludi discussed the film in Backlash, arguing that major changes had been made to the original plot in order to make Alex wholly negative, while Dan's carelessness and the lack of compassion and responsibility raised no discussion, except for a small number of fundamentalist men's groups who said that Dan was eventually forced to own up to his irresponsibility in that "everyone pays the piper".
The film has also had an effect on men. Glenn Close was quoted in 2008 as saying, "Men still come up to me and say, 'You scared the shit out of me.' Sometimes they say, 'You saved my marriage.'"
The film spent eight weeks at #1 in the U.S. and eventually grossed $156.6 million domestically, making the film the second highest-grossing film of 1987 in the U.S. behind Three Men and a Baby. It also grossed $163.5 million overseas for a total gross of $320.1 million, making it the biggest film of 1987 worldwide. This in turn led to several similarly themed psychological thrillers being made throughout the late '80s and '90s.
Overall, the film received positive reviews from critics. Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a rating of 78% based on reviews from 46 critics, with the site's consensus "A potboiler in the finest sense, Fatal Attraction is a sultry, juicy thriller that's hard to look away from once it gets going." On Metacritic, the film has a rating of 67/100 based on reviews from 16 critics.
Much of the film's plot was spoofed in the 1993 comedy Fatal Instinct.
Awards
The film received six nominations for the 60th Academy Awards ceremony:
- Best Picture
- Best Actress in a Leading Roleâ€"Glenn Close
- Best Actress in a Supporting Roleâ€"Anne Archer
- Best Directorâ€"Adrian Lyne
- Best Film Editingâ€"Peter E. Berger and Michael Kahn
- Best Adapted Screenplayâ€"James Dearden
American Film Institute recognition
- AFI's 100 Years...100 Moviesâ€"Nominated
- AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrillsâ€"#28
- AFI's 100 Years...100 Passions - Nominated
- AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes & Villains: Alex Forrestâ€"Villainâ€"#7
- AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) â€" Nominated
Home video
A Special Collector's Edition of the film was released on DVD in 2005. Paramount released Fatal Attraction on Blu-ray Disc on June 9, 2009. The Blu-ray release contained several bonus features from the 2005 DVD, including commentary by director Adrian Lyne, cast and crew interviews, a look at the film's cultural phenomenon, a behind-the-scenes look, rehearsal footage, the alternate ending, and the original theatrical trailer.
Play
A play based on the movie opened in London's West End at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in March 2014. It was adapted by the movie's original screen play writer James Dearden.
Psychiatric evaluation of Forrest
The character of Alex Forrest has been discussed by psychiatrists and film experts, and has been used as a film illustration for the condition borderline personality disorder. The character displays the behaviors of impulsivity, emotional lability, frantic efforts to avoid abandonment, frequent severe anger, self-harming, changing from idealization to devaluation, consistent with the diagnosis, although generally aggression to the self rather than others is a more common feature in borderline personality disorder. Some have instead considered the character to be a psychopath.
As referenced in Orit Kamirs' Every Breath You Take: Stalking Narratives and the Law, "Glenn Close's character Alex is quite deliberately made to be an erotomaniac. Gelder reports that Glenn Close 'consulted three separate shrinks for an inner profile of her character, who is meant to be suffering from a form of obsessive condition known as de Clérambault's syndrome' (Gelder 1990, 93â€"94)".
The popular term 'bunny boiler', used often to describe an obsessive, spurned woman derives from the scene where Alex boils the pet rabbit.
See also
- List of films featuring home invasions
- Mental illness in film
References
External links
- Fatal Attraction at the Internet Movie Database
- Fatal Attraction at AllMovie
- Fatal Attraction at Box Office Mojo
- Fatal Attraction at Rotten Tomatoes
- Fatal Attraction at Metacritic