The Fatal Attraction of Victimising Women

The erotomaniacal villainess of Fatal Attraction is something of a cipher. Only once in the 1987 film do we see Alex Forrest alone. Really alone, that is — not stalking Michael Douglas’s Dan Gallagher at a distance, or obsessively calling his home. She’s slumped on the floor wearing nothing but an oversized t-shirt, listening to Madame Butterfly, methodically turning a light on and off, as if she’s in a fugue. Her character is like the living embodiment of a failed Bechdel test: Alex’s obsession with Dan so defines her that outside its boundaries, she hardly even exists. Who is Alex? Where did she come from? What does she do when she’s not breaking into her married boyfriend’s house and boiling his daughter’s pet rabbit alive?