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| The iconic poster for Adrian Lyne's Fatal Attraction, which effectively combines the erotic with the fatal |
A successful New York lawyer, who is bored in his marriage, steps out of it to enjoy another woman from his office. Unfortunately, she turns out to have a screw loose!
Fatal Attraction is written by James Dearden (Rogue Trader (1999)), with script doctoring by Nicholas Meyer (Time after Time (1979)), and directed by great English filmmaker Adrian Lyne (Foxes (1980)).
Michael Douglas (The In-Laws (2003)) somehow manages to get his lead, who appears an unscrupulous prick for large parts of the film, to become deeply sympathetic in spite of this, which requires a great, rare actor. He is helped in the task by Glenn Close (The Safety of Objects (2001)), who is spectacularly psychotic as Alex, the character who became every (straight) cheating man's worst nightmare with Fatal Attraction. She is outstanding. Also good is Anne Archer (Short Cuts (1993)) as the poor, wronged housewife.
Lyne stages the erotic thriller carefully and shows an admirable knack for suspense and visually oppressive atmosphere. Fatal Attraction is a tremendous, - and implicitly totally conservative, (which was fought over by, among others, Close and the studio), major hit.
Watch a clip from the film here
Cost: 14 mil. $
Box office: 320.1 mil. $
= Blockbuster (returned 22.86 times its cost)
[Fatal Attraction premiered 16 September (New York) and runs 119 minutes. It is based on Dearden's 50 minute film Diversion (1980). Close consulted 3 psychologists to get insight into her character's incestuous background and resulting borderline personality disorder. Shooting took place in New York from September - October 1986 with reshoots in July 1987. The original ending has Alex slashing her own throat, making her suicide appear a murder by Douglas' character: Close fought against the more vengeful ending eventually in the film and successfully attained the self-mutilation aspect in it to underscore Alex's self-destructive tendencies. The film opened #1 to a 7.6 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it maintained its #1 status for the following 7 weeks, before spending the next 5 weeks still in the top 5 (#2-#4-#4-#3-#5), ending up with a gigantic 156.6 mil. $ gross (48.9 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Japan with 20.7 mil. $ (6.5 %) and Germany with 20.5 mil. $ (6.4 %). Roger Ebert gave the film a 2.5/4 star review, translating to two notches harder than this one. The film was nominated for 6 Oscars, winning none: It lost Best Actress to Cher in Moonstruck, Supporting Actress (Archer) to Olympia Dukakis in Moonstruck, Director to Bernardo Bertolucci for The Last Emperor, Editing also to The Last Emperor, which also took Best Picture and Adapted Screenplay (Mark Peploe, Bertolucci). The film was also nominated for 4 Golden Globes, won 1/3 BAFTA noms, was nominated for 2 David di Donatello awards, a Grammy, won a National Board of Review award and many other honors. Lyne returned with Jacob's Ladder (1990). Douglas returned in Wall Street (1987), Close in a voice performance in Gandahar (1988), in Stones for Baharra (1988, TV movie) and theatrically in Dangerous Liaisons (1988). Dearden adapted the film into a stage play in London in 2014. Fatal Attraction is certified fresh at 78 % with a 6.74/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of Fatal Attraction?
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