Screen
O'Brien, Tom
or canable) could get so fixated or vengeful. As acted, Close's .absorbing because ofthe fiercewild anger she ; of htt'-glamotous but wfcchTike looks; and flicker of a smile at cruel moments'....
...But the film provides several'extremely cold chills, and, from Glenn Close, one of the screen's most disturbing portrayals of mental illness in some time...
...One has to accept Douglas's infidelity as a callow, casual act...
...she knows it...
...Director Adrian Lyne veers toward cliche in haying Close live in a Bohemian loft in a lower Manhattan meatpacking district...
...in* dulges in too many obligatory shots of rotating overhead fains, one of the sixteen-ton symbols of film noir that, roughly translated, means "watch out for knives...
...The last half hour particularly prompts both nervous laughter and anxious seat-gripping...
...The best to be said for O'Neal is that here his, studied underacting fits the permanent hangover of the character be plays...
...Keeping things taut works well...
...The problem is they seem like they're in different movies...
...Lyne and screenwriter James Dearden are also subtle enough to allow for some naturalistic comedy, including a silly but convincing bout of lovemaking in a sink...
...He is not unhappy in marriage...
...then blames hirafor ignoring her once he declares the affair at an end...
...Lyne tries to provide hints about why Close comes unhinged, but (wisely for this kind of film) evades a full explanation...
...Here, with Close at the center, she has coprofluced a film that redefines the term "domestic gothic...
...Mailer's' attempt to evade categories is mirrored in his divided attention between Tierney and O'Neal...
...and flicker of a smile at cruel moments...
...Close's character (as written) raises the greatest credibility problems: some may object that no one that gorgeous (or adult, 565...
...He is married...
...wife Anne Archer is no movie mousyspouse, but a sexy, tough-minded woman who gets to give a good fit when she finds out about the affair...
...RoseUini is lovery tef watch, though pwhaps this is just nostalgia.O'NeaTfrfflther (Lawrence Tierney) provides comic relief with deadpan delivery in his "tough guy" role;at least he manage...
...Lyne also...
...What they and producers Stanley Jaffe and Sherry Lansing have created is the texture of real life that subsumes the sensationalism of the story and makes one forget to object to it...
...for a white jailer even creates a quiet tension between the prim Houses and mack doings on the Weach-blonde sands...
...You leave laughing, not at any ineptitude, but, almost as after a fine Hitchcock film, with relief: you have survived...
...Lansing in particular has tried this before (in the 1984 First Born), but miscasting undid her (Ten Garr in an unapt melodramatic role...
...Douglas, by contrast, lives with his wife and child in the more domestic Upper West Side...
...It has been said that the best dramatic suspense involves not mystifying an audience, but telling what will happen while compelling the audience to watch nevertheless...
...still, she lures him on...
...Douglas's household also has real life solidity...
...But both director and female lead keep the material at a fresh enough angle to provide nuances...
...to wink, which provides some ironic distance on the material)a1...
...Indeed, the first sh6t of Close suggests why the film works: you see part of her at a party, at an angle in the distance, rather than a blunt, obvious full shot of her face...
...Close plays a New York editor who has a one-night stand with lawyer Michael Douglas, and then proceeds to try to wreck his life...
...artfully exploits Ihe Cape Cod landscape...
...She had the" preview audience squirming...
...He also gets the worst line in any movie in 1$ TOM OBRIBN 566 KEEPING THINGS TAUT 'ATTRACTION' & TOUGH GUYS' Fatal Attraction yields a dose of powerful terror...
...The plot relies on several cliches (including the now standard fake-ending), and there are credibility problems with some of the characters...
...again, the film makes, it easy by convincing us of everything else about his life (wife, child, and a golden Labrador whose tail comically hangs out their Volvo's door...
...At this, Fatal Attraction succeeds...
Vol. 114 • October 1987 • No. 17
