Word: bethe
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...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 and healthy Alex. As it turns out, Bobbie's a killer...
...plot is worth parsing, right up to the "surprise" ending that most Americans must by now know by heart. (No peeking at the next five paragraphs if you haven't seen the film.) Start with a Manhattan marriage, radiant in its yup-scale domesticity. Beth (Anne Archer) gets dressed for a party -- sexy. Dan walks the dog -- cute. Daughter Ellen (Ellen Hamilton Latzen) crawls into bed with Mom -- poignant. To an outsider, their life must look like a New Age greeting card...
...outsider is Alex, who meets Dan at the party. A business conference and a rainstorm reintroduce them that weekend while Beth and Ellen are in the country house hunting. Across the restaurant dinner table, Alex seems so hungry for him that you can hear her stomach rumble. "You're here with a strange girl being a naughty boy," she tells him, perhaps before he has even flirted with a naughty thought. But Dan is a man, and pathetically ordinary. From curiosity or concupiscence, from boredom or weakness, he goes to her apartment. Next thing, they are making...
...love is of man's life a thing apart," wrote Byron in Don Juan; " 'Tis woman's whole existence." Dan's fling is of Dan's marriage a thing apart. He can shrug off the sentiment as he showers off the sweat. No love for Alex, no guilt toward Beth. Thanks, hon, gotta run. After all, as he tells Alex, he's happily married; he has a six-year-old girl; "I'm lucky." When Alex pops the question -- "So what are you doing here?" -- he figures he can squirm out of it. But Dan has underestimated her fatal attraction...
...many cries for help. The first calls are to the office -- she has two tickets to Madame Butterfly, would he like to come? -- then to his home. She reveals she is pregnant with his child; he renounces her. He arrives home one evening to find Alex chatting airily with Beth about purchasing their apartment now that they are moving to the country. She pours acid on his car hood, and still he cannot confide in Beth. Fretting at his living-room desk one night, he glances up at Beth reading a fairy tale to Ellen. He still believes...