Now, This Is The Film That Should Not Be Ignored!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                I swear, I must have been having myself something of a Short Film Fest, during the eclipse the other day, because one film I finally got to watch was James Dearden's 1980 British telefilm, called "Diversion."

                                Why is this so important?  Because, seven years later, it evolved into what so many of us today know as that post-coital horror fest, called "Fatal Attraction."

                                 Yes, this is where it all began, actually started.  And I want to say outright that it is so much better than the actual film, though it runs roughly forty minutes.  What is amazing is how much of what we know from the film is retained, how they are different, and how each work both for and against the other.

                                  The film begins in blackness, with the ringing of a telephone.  The title flashes onto the screen.  The opening has such British reserve, it could be a redo of "Brief Encounter."  The actors, and their surroundings, are more ordinary, less stylized, and hence, more real, than their glamorized Hollywood counterparts.  There is a child, barely out of infancy, named Charlie, who looks like a sweet little boy, and not the frightening, androgynous creature named Ellen in the 1987 film.  Though I suppose the designers and stylists, not the child herself, are to blame for how she looks.  I still question why.

                                  Names are changed.  In "Fatal Attraction," the adults are Dan, Beth, and Alex.  Here, they are Gary, Annie, and Erica.

                                  Two key things happen off screen.  One is the party where Gary and Erica met.  The other is the graphic sex, which was so over the top in the film, reducing Douglas and Close to a couple of over aged adolescents!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                   The closest this version comes to violence, is the wrist slashing scene, which is revealed with blood on the face, though not as much of it, nor any banging sounds on the soundtrack to accentuate the horror, coupled with Douglas acting like he is running a decathalon, trying to find bandages.  What is shown in "Diversion" is just enough, at this point, for someone in Gary's position to realize his is in something over his head, though he doesn't quite get it, yet.

                                     When does he realize it?  Well, not until the end of this version, which has Erica's menacing nature increase with each phone call answered or not.  The true genius of the work, showing how brilliant "Fatal Attraction" could have been, but is not, is the ambiguous ending.  "Diversion" ends with the viewer and Guy being menaced by a continuously ringing phone, the tension of which is as terrifying as the film.  Here, the viewer, like Gary, knows who is on the other end, but Annie doesn't.  So, she, not knowing, goes to the phone, picks it up, saying "Hello?"

                                        Blackout.  That is it!  Brilliant!

                                        Now, there is no way "Fatal Attraction" could have ended here, but something better than its sell-out paen to Conservative values--even the alternate ending still let Dan  go free!!!!!!!!!!!  It deserved to be far more brilliant than what it became.

                                        One of many reasons I prefer "Diversion" is that the actors play their roles with more credibility.  Michael Douglas, as Dan Gallagher, is the smuggest SOB I have ever seen, and, even when Alex is going for him with the knife, I was rooting for her.  Though she goes too far with the rabbit and the kidnapping of Ellen, which make no sense anyway, because Ellen, while she lacks style, is clearly a child wise enough not to go anywhere with strangers.

As hard as
Glenn Close worked to make Alex sympathetic and credible, succeeding up to the moment when the car is trashed, Cherie Lunghi, who plays Erica, and who I have never heard of, and what a pity, beautifully underplays the craziness in line readings, facial expressions, and body language.  She slowly builds to a realization of Erica being deeply disturbed, whereas Glenn Close's Medusa hair, the too "Come hither" looks reveal an inner wildness just waiting to be unleashed, demonstrating she is crazy from the get go.  Any man smarter than Dan--which is just about anyone--would have known to  avoid her on sight.

                                           Same with Stephen Moore, as Gary.  He is as far from Michael Douglas' smugness as one can get--thank God.  He is an ordinary man, sucked into something he does not deserve, but, by the end, knows he was wrong to take the bait, unlike Dan Gallagher, who felt the whole thing was Alex's fault.  Oh, Erica does not get pregnant here, so the inconsideration, on both characters' parts, for an unborn fetus, is eliminated.  One can sympathize with him, because he gets that he is wrong.

                                           "Diversion" could generate just as much social discussion as "Fatal Attraction" has over the last 30 years.  It's just when I saw it, I justified the faith I had that the final film could have been so much better, if only it had not sold out.

                                            I can still recall seeing the film for the first time, back in 1987, at the now defunct Paramount Theater, which was underground, not far from where I worked, at Lincoln Center.  The film was just beginning to get hot, so I went one night, after work.  I was alone, surrounded by an audience of mostly women.  During the climax, when Anne Archer is in the bathroom, rubs steam off the mirror, and sees Glenn Close standing behind her, the theater went nuts, with all these women, from that point, till Alex was shot, screaming with blood lust.  I was more terrified of them, than the film!  "This is so wrong," I kept thinking, of the turn that the film took.  The most interesting aspect here was having Anne Archer kill Glenn Close; all through the film I kept wondering what if the casting had been reversed?  Anne showed she had the acting chops to tap into the darkness of Alex.  And there are two ways to view this outcome--the Fifties housewife saving American morality, or that it takes a real woman to solve a problem a man should have been able to handle.  What is more interesting is both have merit.

                                           "Fatal Attraction" will always be cinema's greatest Rorschach Test.  But I am urging you to watch "Diversion."  The promise of the first reveals the artistry which could have resided in the other.

                                             Perhaps, in time, I will come to regard "Diversion" as the real thing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!