Can lust still be dangerous? Sure, sure, of course it can. But can lust be as dangerous as it was in 1987? You have the opportunity to find out now. This week the series “Fatal Attraction” premiered on Sky Showtime. The series is a remake of the legendary film from 1987, which in Norwegian had the title “Dangerous Desire”. Joshua Jackson has taken over the role of lawyer Dan Gallagher from Michael Douglas, while Lizzy Caplan is a demonstratively dark-haired version of Dan’s mistress Alex, played by a Glenn Close with light curls and a penchant for cooking completely innocent pets. ICONIC LOOK: When actress Kate Walsh took the stage with flowing blonde hair and an off-the-shoulder white dress at the 2019 Costume Designers Guild Awards, everyone knew she had dressed up as Glenn Close in Dangerous Desire. Photo: AFP The story has been well known since then: the family man Dan meets the alluring Alex, is immediately attracted, and has a short and stormy affair with her – only to find that she won’t let go when he tries to dump her. Alex starts behaving irrationally. She stalks Dan, stalks his family. It ends, of course, in death. It is an interesting project. There is hardly any film that is as much a product of its time as the original “Dangerous Desire”. Erotic thrillers had already been in the air for several years: the genre began with Richard Gere’s breakthrough film “American Gigolo” in 1980, increased in intensity with “Body Heat” the following year and culminated with “Dangerous Desire” and the equally scandal-ridden “Basic Instinct” in 1982. The Jappe era permeates all these films. It’s a new world where greed is good, the suits are Armani, and temptations are there to fall for. The desire for beautiful bodies is closely linked to the desire for expensive suits and fast cars. PHENOMENON: One of the most famous erotic thrillers, “Basic Instinct” from 1992, made Sharon Stone a megastar. Photo: Reuters At the same time, the US is still a conservative country, and the expectation that promiscuous sexuality will be punished means that the audience just sits and waits for the hedonists in the lead role to meet themselves at the door. The AIDS crisis is an unspoken backdrop, because everyone knows that sex with a stranger can be fatal. In addition, the premiere of “Dangerous Desire” came in the wake of a larger conversation in the American public, which revolved around a relatively new and foreign creature, the “career woman”. The fact that more and more women put off starting a family, and instead went hard into working life and competed with the most ambitious men, created unrest in the culture. Many felt that it shook the very foundations of society that the population was no longer neatly organized into nuclear families. ICONIC LOOK: When actress Kate Walsh took the stage with flowing blonde hair and an off-the-shoulder white dress at the 2019 Costume Designers Guild Awards, everyone knew she had dressed up as Glenn Close in Dangerous Desire. Photo: AFP In “Dangerous Desire”, Alex is such a troublemaker, a financially independent woman with a stylish apartment in the center of New York, but without a husband and children. She is a clear contrast to the lover’s wife Beth, played by Anne Archer, pretty, gorgeous, stay-at-home, and with a desire to raise her family out in the country. It was these qualities of Alex that made “Dangerous Desire” something completely different from what the filmmakers originally envisioned – and that it would face heavy criticism for demonizing independent, professional women. Producer Sherry Lansing really wanted to create a sympathetic portrait of a scorned mistress. She had recently been dumped herself, and had been surprised by how the breakup had awakened certain stalker-like traits in herself. Director Adrian Lyne, one of the masters of the erotic thriller, was an avowed feminist who in no way wanted to demonize career women. The idea was that the audience should identify with both main characters: With the woman who experiences being seen as a distraction for a short period of time, by a man who doesn’t care what emotions she may have invested in the relationship – or with the man who gives in for desire, and panics when he realizes that that choice could cost him everything he has. SEX AND CONSUMERISM: Richard Gere and Lauren Hutton dressed up in Armani in “American Gigolo” in 1980, creating a huge demand for Giorgio Armani’s clothes. In 2003, they posed in the costumes from the film together with the designer himself. Photo: REUTERS But during the work on the film, the studio pushed for the main character Dan to be easier to relate to for the audience. Gradually, Dan became more likable, and Alex more villainous. Then came the screenings for the test audience. The reception was uniformly lukewarm, with one exception. Viewers loved a scene where Beth, on the phone, threatened to kill Alex if she got close to the family again. Soon the message came from the top. The mistress, the intruder, the stalker, the destroyer of the nuclear family, didn’t just have to die. The audience had to see her killed. Lyne and his team had already shot the entire movie, with an ending where Alex took her own life, but made it look like Dan had killed her. Six months later, they were ordered to shoot a new ending, where Alex tries to kill Beth, and Beth kills her with a shotgun. STRONGLY DISAGREE: Glenn Close, who played Alex Forrest in the original “Fatal Attraction,” strongly resented being pressured to record a new ending. Photo: AP Lyne did not want such an end. Glenn Close hated it. But the audience loved it. A controversial classic was born, which would become the subject of thousands of analyzes and comments in the years that followed. But even after Alex was made something close to a monster, there were women in the audience who took her side. They saw what she was meant to be: A woman who refused to make it easy for the man, who wouldn’t let him have his comfortable affair, who didn’t back down with honor intact—but who insisted on being seen and heard. The 2023 version neither can nor will be what the 1987 version was. Rather, the question is whether “Dangerous Desire” still works when the parts of the film that are questionable have been adjusted or updated. For example, the new series tries to live up to the filmmakers’ real intention by spending a lot of time with Alex, by giving her a backstory and a more pronounced mental illness. It’s likable. At the same time, there is always a danger in such stories of creating too much understanding for the villain. It can quickly happen that the villain ceases to be unpredictable and scary – which is strictly speaking his or her most important task. But it works quite well here, thanks in particular to some terrific acting by Jackson and Caplan. TAKING OVER FAMOUS ROLES: Lizzy Caplan and Joshua Jackson star as Alex and Dan, who have a secret affair, in the remake of ‘Dangerous Desire’. Photo: AP It is not as successful when the series creators put a frame story around the story of Dan and Alex, and let Dan look back on what has happened, fifteen years later, while he tries to have a better relationship with his daughter. Here there is a lot of what is a refrain in our own time: A lot of talk about psychology and therapy and trauma. That kind of thing is rarely distinctly sexy, at least not on TV. But will this year’s Alex Forrest follow in the footsteps of Alex from 1987, and cook the rabbit for Dan’s daughter? And thus recreate the scene that made “rabbit cooker” a permanent term for an unstable single lady, one that a man would never have to mess with? The actors have hinted that this Alex doesn’t have it in him to kill anyone – while admitting that something will happen to the poor rabbit. Over 25 years after the erotic thriller’s climax, this is perhaps where the greatest excitement lies.
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In 1987, the public wanted to see the mistress killed – Speech
