Fatal Attraction

Fatal Attraction is a movie starring Michael Douglas and Glenn Close that tells the story of a weekend affair that turns into a dangerously clingy obsession for a man who considered it just a fling. Douglas plays Dan Gallagher, an attorney, who lives in Manhattan with his wife and daughter, Ellen. He meets Alex, a beautiful editor for a publishing company, one weekend his wife and Ellen are away and they have an affair. Gallagher spends the night in her apartment one night, the fact that they slept together is implied by the way a long shot of them entering her apartment is cross cut with an establishing shot of the street with the sun rising in the morning the next day. The camera pans across the street until we see Dan's shadow walking down the street, getting smaller and smaller. I think this was a kind of way of demonstrating how Dan was "walking out" on the affair, he doesn't wait for her to get up, but rather just leaves her a note. When he walks in the door, his first missing call is from his wife telling him to call him, the camera zooms in on a close up of his face and you can tell he is contemplating what to do and he actually takes a shower before actually talking to her. This symbolizes him washing away the sin of what he did. The irony is that right after he talks to her, Alex calls. This is where Dan makes his first mistake, he sees Alex again, and not just to hook up, but to have a lovely afternoon in the park. The shot cuts from him on the phone with her to a subjective point of view as if we were running behind them and the dog in the park. It cuts to a long establishing shot of the park that zooms in on them wrestling in the field. They have lunch in Alex's apartment and although there is obviously light outside, the inside of her apartment appears hazy, and there is lowkey lighting, representative of the fact that she is shady. There is foreshadowing as to what comes next as Dan tells the story of an opera he once saw where a sailor left a woman who then wanted to kill herself. FORESHADOWING AND DRAMATIC IRONY for those who like to guess the twists in movies. Later on when Dan is explaining to Alex how their affair must end, Alex doesn't appear to care, she just seems angry. She has this big blonde hair that makes her look super pretty, but she has very dark makeup around her eyes that accentuate how creepy she looks when she is looking at Dan. They argue about the fact that Dan took it as just fun and she thought it was more, but we don't expect the drastic measures she will take. Dan is about to walk out the door but she calls out to him, "Why don't you come over here and say goodbye nicely". There is a medium shot of her on the other side of the room with her hands behind her back. She is wearing a white dress that looks like one a patient in a mental hospital would wear. She starts to cry as Dan hugs her and then starts kissing him passionately with her hands all over her face. This is where we starts to see the blood coming from her hands onto his face and he looks down at her wrists, and immediately, a close up of slashed wrists, and a blast of intense non-diegetic music. This is when we start to think, this chick is crazy. Thankfully, Dan handles the situation and she turns out alright. The director does a good job with the juxtaposition of light shots when showing Dan and dark shots when showing Alex to show how she is like a plague to him . One shot of Dan on the phone in the kitchen is really light, and it pans across to show Alex in bed, completely in darkness but still creepily listening to Dan's conversation. Alex starts to show up in random places and Dan has to become more and more firm with her. It starts to really get crazy when Dan's wife goes to pick up Ellen from school, and Alex has already taken her from school and to the carnival. The director makes a point of cross cutting between Dan's wife frantically searching for Alex in the neighborhood, whether a long shot of her running around in the house or her frantic point of view while driving, and the cheery carnival where Alex and Ellen are, where it is bright and cheerful diegetic music is playing. Close-ups of Alex and Ellen on a ride show how uncomfortable Ellen looks and how creepy Alex is because she starts off looking mad, and then smiles like a maniac. The bumpy ride of the rollercoaster describes what she is doing to their marriage and is cross cut between shots of Dan's wife getting in a crash because of all the stress. His wife ends up in the hospital and Ellen comes home and Dan has finally had it. He goes to their apartment and they get in their second to last fight (not to spoil the film). This is one where one of my favorite shots of the movie is. Dan is able to pin alex to the ground and starts to choke up. The camera cuts between shots from Dan's point of view of Alex on the floor, and Alex's point of view of Dan above her. The kitchen light is swinging back and forth above them and the lights seems to flash as she is being choked, representative of her life slipping away. He lets her go and she goes for a knife but he is able to wrestle it away. There is an extreme close up of the knife as he slowly puts it down on the counter and he starts to slowly back away. The next shot is so scary because it is a medium shot of her doing her creepy smile that slowly zooms out and nothing is said as Dan walks out the door and we don't see her again until the very end, where everything must end.