This time in series format, the story focuses on certain psychological disorders rather than on the moral side of a marital weakness and its serious consequences.
When the film Fatal Attraction was released in 1987, with Michael Douglas and Glenn Close, there was a kind of shock among the public since it seemed to warn about the atrocious consequences that marital infidelity could cause. The director, Adrian Lyne, had already shown a certain inclination for provocative stories, such as in 9½ weeks, with Kim Basinger and Mickey Rourke, then with Indecent Proposal, with Robert Reford and Demi Moore, or Lolita, about the controversial novel by Vladimir Nabokov.
One of the final scenes of the film became part of popular folklore to define a certain type of danger with the phrase “That woman cooks your rabbit.” The series recently released on Paramount+ takes up this story and develops it over 8 episodes - which could have been less - where the nature of the characters is analyzed in greater depth.
What is the new series based on “Fatal Attraction” about?
The series begins when Dan Gallagher (Joshua Jackson) manages to be granted parole after spending fifteen years in prison for the murder of Alex Forrest (Lizzy Caplan). From then on the narrative jumps from the present to the past to show how the events developed. Dan, who has lost everything - his family, his professional prestige and his freedom - begins by losing the appointment he had hoped for: as attorney general he took it for granted that he would be appointed judge, as his father had been, but this did not happen. occurs.
Faced with his disappointment, deeper than he shows, he seems to become vulnerable to the seduction of Alex, a young woman who works in another area of the court. What begins as a trivial adventure turns into a desperate harassment that, as we already know, will end very badly.
If Lyne's film contained a strong moral element, a warning taken to an unexpected extreme, the series concentrates more on the psychological, even psychotic, elements that drive the characters. Dan's daughter, Ellen (Alyssa Jirrels), an advanced psychology student, is working on a thesis about Jung that revolves around certain women who have the power to drag a man to hell and succumb themselves in the process.
Beth (Amanda Peet), Dan's wife, is one of the victims and not only because of her husband's infidelity, and Mike (Toby Huss), Dan's best friend and his chief investigator, is the one who points out to him the importance of having disappointed him. to his father - now deceased - for failing to become a judge. The extension into eight episodes dissolves the tension of the story to a certain extent; Lizzy Caplan is an attractive young woman but she doesn't have the terrifying intensity of Glenn Close, but the story retains its relevance in a way.
