Word: fatales
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Audiences can be led, stretched, manipulated, but ultimately each moviegoer makes up his own movie, finding motivations that are unvoiced in the picture, explanations for behavior undreamed of by the screenwriter. Fatal Attraction is an astonishing beneficiary of this consumer creativity. The picture is like Velcro: any theory can attach itself to the story and take hold. As Lansing says, "It's a Rorschach test for everyone who sees it." Is Alex worth our sympathy, pity, fear, loathing, or all of the above? Outside the Evergreen Theater in suburban Chicago, Rochelle Major says, "I had to believe that Alex...
...life and death. Folks on dates don't know whether to cross their legs or their fingers. So, dear, what's playing at the Cineplex tonight? Answer: a host of movies, mostly in the newly revitalized thriller genre, that exploit the itch and edginess in right-now relationships. Fatal Attraction is the leader, but others have similar themes and might deserve similar titles. Among them...
...Fatal Infection." In Kathryn Bigelow's bleak, gross, great-looking horror movie Near Dark, an Oklahoma farm lad falls for an alluring blond from parts unknown. She seems interested in him, so why won't she give him a little love bite? Because, as he realizes too late, he will end up with the world's most toxic hickey. His dream girl is a vampire, and abstinence is the only sure precaution against infection. It takes several harrowing nights with her rambunctious vampire pals, who kidnap his kid sister, before he can escape from the Land of the Undead. Near...
...Fatal Abstraction." In Ridley Scott's Someone to Watch Over Me, a cop (Tom Berenger) is assigned to guard a rich woman (Mimi Rogers) who witnessed a murder. He loves his wife but is seduced by the lady's wealth and vulnerability. And then -- can you hear it coming? -- his child is kidnaped. The cop must wake up to his duties and rely on his wife's cunning to help outwit the killer. Ironically, this exercise in high style may have gone lame with audiences because of its accidental echoes of Fatal Attraction. It's too close, but without...
...Fatal Repulsion." In Andy Anderson's minimalist revenge drama Positive I.D., a Texas real estate agent (Stephanie Rascoe) is raped. When she learns that the rapist is up for parole, she devises a second identity for herself, that of a good-time gal named Bobbie, and hangs out at a bar owned by the rapist's uncle. She soon sees that Bobbie is a more suitable, rewarding part than the quiet housewife she has been playing for too many years. She might be Fatal Attraction's Beth, now cosseted and corseted by marriage, who'd rather be a free...