Great Character: Alex Forrest (“Fatal Attraction”)

Recently I asked if there were members of the GITS community who would like to participate with guest columns. Today’s Great Character post is provided by longtime GITS follower Jason Cuthbert.

Hollywood storytelling has a proud tradition of suspense films featuring feisty femme fatale anti-heroines and villainesses. You can look towards the classic film noir “devils in a dress” style or the more modern manipulative seductresses. But back in 1987, actress Glenn Close became the queen who could creep out all the rest — Alex Forrest — a delusional hormone hypnotizer who transforms the term “femme fatale” into the movie title itself — a Fatal Attraction.

Fatal Attraction plot summary from IMDB:

A married man’s one nightstand comes back to haunt him when that lover begins to stalk him and his family.

Fatal Attraction screenwriter James Dearden wisely crafted a psychological thriller that initially teeters towards making the cheating husband Dan Gallagher (Michael Douglas) look like the dingy antagonist. He has a loving and supportive wife and a super sweet daughter who he is somehow able to completely block out of his withering code of ethics when he meets Alex.

But what allows Dan to keep his protagonist status, even with his degenerate version of loyalty and shattered wedding vows, is the simple fact that Dan never ever lied about being married and never promised Alex anything other than a night of life-affirming sex:

DAN GALLAGHER: You’re so sad. You know that, Alex? Lonely and very sad.
ALEX FORREST: Don’t you ever pity me, you smug bastard.
DAN GALLAGHER: I’ll pity you… I’ll pity you. I’ll pity you because you’re sick.
ALEX FORREST: Why? Because I won’t allow you treat me like some slut you can just bang a couple of times and throw in the garbage?

The fact of the matter is, although they are both morally corrupt in their own way, Alex Forrest wanted what she couldn’t have and still chose to fight that losing battle of lust anyway:

ALEX FORREST: [to Dan] Well, what am I supposed to do? You won’t answer my calls, you change your number. I mean, I’m not gonna be ignored, Dan!

She even made Dan’s innocent wife a mortal enemy:

ALEX FORREST: [to Beth] And don’t you think I understand what you’re doing? You’re trying to move him into the country… and you’re keeping him away from me. And you’re playing happy family. Aren’t you?
[begins to slice her own leg with a butcher knife]
ALEX FORREST: You wouldn’t understand that because you’re so… so selfish. He told me about you. He told me about you. He was very honest. If you weren’t so stupid, you’d know that. But you’re so stupid. You’re so stupid… you’re a stupid, selfish bitch!

The scariest part of Alex Forrest’s conjured up “relationship-wreck” with Dan unfolds when she must make the continual shifts from her fictional fantasy “marriage” with Dan to her real world mistress/three-is-a-crowd reality that Dan has both feet firmly planted in:

The relentless fear of having one’s family life ruptured by a force you cannot reason with makes Alex Forrest a — GREAT CHARACTER.

It’s virtually impossible to overestimate the impact Fatal Attraction had on American culture when it was released in 1987. With articles like this one in TIME — “Killer! Fatal Attraction strikes gold as a parable of sexual guilt” — Alex Forrest became the paradigm of “The Scorned Lover From Hell.” In some ways, it was the perfect date movie: Guys liked it because they got to see a dude having hot adulterous sex. Gals loved it because they got to jab their dates in the ribs and say, “That’s what will happen to you if you ever think about screwing around on me.” The result? A staggering $320M in worldwide B.O. revenues.

And most of that derived from the alluring and unnerving Nemesis: Alex Forrest.

Thanks to Jason Cuthbert for this week’s Great Character post.

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