Fatal Attraction

Fatal Attraction is a 1987 American psychological thriller film directed by Adrian Lyne and written by James Dearden, based on the short film Fun from 1980. Starring Glenn Close, Michael Douglas and Anne Archer, it tells the story of a married man having an affair with a strange woman who becomes dangerously obsessed with him.

It enjoyed immense popularity, becoming the second highest-grossing film in the United States and the highest-grossing film in the world in 1987. So great was its influence on society that critics and the general public highlighted the impact of his dramatic script, which reconsidered at every level the reflection on marital infidelity. It received six Oscar nominations in the categories of: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Editing, but failed to win any awards.

Plot

Successful New York lawyer Dan Gallagher (Michael Douglas), married and father of a girl, meets Alexandra "Alex" Forrest (Glenn Close), an editor for an advertising company, for work reasons. Over the weekend, when his wife Beth (Anne Archer) and his daughter Ellen (Ellen Hamilton) are out of town, Dan has an affair with Alex. Although he thought it was a passing thing, Alex starts to get attached to him.

Dan and Alex have an unplanned second meeting after she was pushy. When Dan makes it clear to her that it all had to end, she slits her wrists in a suicide attempt. He gives her first aid, bandages her and drops her off at her apartment. When she thinks the affair is over, she suddenly appears in various places to see him. To apologize, Alex waits for him in her office one day to invite him to see a performance of the opera Madama Butterfly , but he declines the invitation. So, Alex keeps calling him insistently to the point that Dan orders her secretary to block all her calls. Alex insists 24 hours a day, then confronts him and reveals that she is expecting his child. Although Dan wants nothing to do with her, Alex forces him to take responsibility for it. After changing her phone number, Alex shows up at her apartment (which was for sale) pretending to be a buyer, meeting Beth for the first time and learning of the couple's intentions to move to the country. Later that night, Dan goes to Alex's apartment and they argue. In response, she swears that she will not be ignored by him.

Dan moves his family to a country house in Bedford, which doesn't stop Alex, who makes a cassette and sends it to him. Dan plays it in his car and realizes that the tape is full of insults and obscenities towards him. She chases him into a parking lot and pours battery acid on her car, then follows him that night to his new house. When she sees him reunited with his wife and daughter, Alex storms out and throws up in the bushes. Dan goes to the police and places a restraining order against her. The police refuse, as Dan says that the warrant is not for him but for a client, and that the client must first be held accountable for adultery.

At one point, when the family wasn't home, Alex kills Ellen's rabbit and puts it to boil in a pot. After that, Dan decides to tell his wife the whole truth and her supposed pregnancy. Furious, Beth orders him to leave the house but before doing so, Dan calls Alex to tell him that his wife knows everything; then she goes on the phone and threatens Alex to kill her if she keeps on insisting. Days later, Alex picks up Ellen at school and takes her to an amusement park, buys her ice cream, and they both ride a roller coaster. Beth, desperate not to know where her daughter is, frantically goes looking for her in her car, crashing and being injured. That same afternoon, Alex drops Ellen off at Ellen's house safe and sound from her, even asking for a goodbye kiss. Beth is released from the hospital and taken home, forgiving Dan and telling him to come back.

Filled with anger over what happened to Beth and Ellen, Dan goes to Alex's apartment and violently attacks her. They both hit and injure each other, and Dan tries to choke her but regrets it. As Alex tries to regain his strength, he sees a knife and charges at it. Dan takes the knife from him and, disoriented, leaves. He goes to the police again and begins the search for her to arrest her.

Beth, fresh out of the hospital, is running a bath in the tub and Alex unexpectedly appears, barefoot and with the same knife in hand. He corners her and expresses all her rancor to her. Flustered, Alex cuts herself in the leg, then attacks Beth. Dan hears the screams and, terrified, runs to the bathroom, where he struggles with Alex. She cuts him on her arm and chest and he manages to plunge her into the tub until she drowns. Dan, weakly, tries to think about what happened next to the tub, and suddenly Alex stands up with the intention of attacking him, and that's when Beth, who had run out of the bathroom to look for a gun stored in her closet, he shoots her in the chest, killing her instantly. The final scene shows Dan talking to the police about what happened before going inside and hugging his family. The film ends with a shot of a family portrait of Dan, Beth and Ellen.

Cast and dubbing

Original Actor United States	Character	Voice actor Spain	Voice actor Mexico
Michael Douglas	Dan Gallagher	Salvador Vidal	José Lavat
Glenn Close	Alexandra "Alex" Forrest	María Luisa Solá	Andrea Coto
Anne Archer	Beth Rogerson Gallagher	Marta Angelat	Rocío Garcel
Ellen Hamilton Latzen	Ellen Gallagher	Nuria Trifol	Patricia Acevedo
Stuart Pankin	Jimmy	Antonio Lara	Juan Alfonso Carralero
Ellen Foley	Hildy
Fred Gwynne	Arthur
Meg Mundy	Joan Rogerson, mother of Beth
Tom Brennan	Howard Rogerson, father of Beth
Lois Smith	Martha, secretary of Dan
Mike Nussbaum	Bob Drimmer
J. J. Johnston	O'Rourke
Michael Arkin	Lieutenant
Jane Krakowski	Christine, babysitter

Production

Script

The film was adapted by James Dearden with the help of Nicholas Meyer from Fun, a short film of his own which was broadcast for British television. In his book The View from the Bridge: Memories of Star Trek and a Life in Hollywood, Nicholas Meyer stated that producer Stanley He was tasked with revising Dearden's script by R. Jaffe, to which he wrote a four-page document with suggestions for the film and a new ending. Weeks later, he met with director Adrian Lyne and gave him additional suggestions.

Alternate ending

The original script stated that Alex had committed suicide by slashing her throat with the knife she had previously used to attack Dan when he confronted her at her home, in order to somehow implicate him in her death. When Dan is taken under arrest by the police, Beth finds the cassette that Alex had sent her husband and in which she threatened to commit suicide if he did not reciprocate. Realizing her intentions, Ella Beth takes the cassette to the authorities, freeing him of all responsibility for what happened. The final scene showed Alex slitting her own throat while she was listening to the opera Madame Butterfly.

The final ending was recorded three weeks later, and shows Alex confronting Dan in the bathroom of his house and ultimately being killed by Beth. This shot juxtaposes the role of both women, with Alex being the victim and Beth being the aggressor by firing the weapon.

In the special edition DVD released in 2002, Glenn Close stated that he had doubts about recording a new ending, believing that Alex would tend to "self-destruct by committing suicide". He fought for two weeks to keep the original ending, but then gave up. The film was initially released in Japan with the original ending. It also appeared on the VHS and LaserDisc edition released by Paramount in 1992 and on the DVD version ten years later.

Reception

The interpretation of Glenn Close as Alex Forrest is considered one of the largest in the 1980s and has been studied by psychiatrists as an example of personality disorder. Close was the Oscar candidate for this performance, losing Cher in Moon charm.

Upon its release, Fatal Attraction gained widespread attention for the possible consequences of marital infidelity. Some feminists, on the other hand, did not appreciate the fact that a strong woman like Alex ended up being a psychopath. Feminist Susan Faludi stated that many changes were made to the original script to make Alex look completely negative, while the faults of Dan to their marriage, his lack of compassion and responsibility did not generate further discussion.

The film also made a big impact on male viewers. In 2008, Glenn Close stated:

[There are] men who still come to me and say, "You scared me to shit." Sometimes they say, "You saved my marriage."

Fatal Attraction led the box office for eight consecutive weeks in the United States, eventually grossing $156 million domestically, becoming the second-highest-grossing film in the United States of 1987, second only to for the comedy Three men and a baby. Worldwide, the film grossed $163.5 million, for a total of $320 million, becoming the most successful film of the year in the world. This great success prompted other film studios to bet on the psychological thriller genre in their new films. Projects.

Overall, the film received positive reviews from critics. The specialized website Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 78% approval, based on 46 reviews, and declared it: "A boiling pot in the best of ways. Fatal Attraction is a passionate and flavorful thriller, one that is hard to look away from once it's begun." Website Metacritic gave it an approval score of 67 out of 100, based on 16 reviews.

Alex Forrest's Character Analysis

The character of Alex Forrest, played by Glenn Close, has been the subject of analysis by various psychiatrists and film experts, declaring him the perfect example of borderline personality disorder. The character demonstrates impulsive behavior, emotional lability, frantic efforts to avoid abandonment, frequent anger, deliberate self-harm, and rapid swings between idealization and denigration; these symptoms are consistent with the common BPD diagnosis. Others have also suggested taking the character as an example of psychopathy.

According to writer Orit Kamirs, Alex Forrest was deliberately framed as an erethomaniac, a mental disorder that made Alex believe that Dan, a man of a higher social status, was in love with her of a lower social status, a disorder also called Clerambault syndrome.

The term "bunny boiler" is popular in Anglo culture and refers to an obsessive and scorned woman, derived from the scene in which Beth discovers that her daughter's bunny was slit by Alex and put to boil.

Awards and nominations

At the sixtieth -60th- edition of the Oscars, the film received six nominations:

At the forty-fifth—45th—Golden Globe Awards, the film received four nominations:

• Best dramatic film
• Best director
• Best dramatic actress
• Best cast actress