#petersullivan

Untitled #481, Peter Sullivan, 2000, MoMA: Drawings and Prints

The Judith Rothschild Foundation Contemporary Drawings Collection Gift Size: 26 x 41" (66 x 104.1 cm) Medium: Gouache on paper

The best thing about Fatal Affair is the title. From those two words, you know everything you need about the movie, down to its unoriginality. You know exactly where every single scene is headed, where every character will end up from second one. There is no reason for this movie to exist except to give work to Nia Long and Omar Epps.

Ellie Warren (Nia Long) is a successful attorney who reconnects with David Hammond (Omar Epps), an old friend from college. Unsatisfied with her home life, she briefly flirts with him but abandons the idea of an affair. Unfortunately, David has been obsessed with Ellie for years and refuses to believe they cannot be together.

This movie has no guts, whatsoever. When Ellie goes on the one “date” with David, they don’t even end up having sex in the club bathroom. There is no “Affair” in Fatal Affair, which means while Ellie might’ve been wrong to skirt so close to cheating on her husband, Marcus (Stephen Bishop, in a bland role), she did nothing but give David a case of blue balls so severe he’s gone loony. The movie does nothing with her home life either. She nearly succumbs to temptation because her husband is still recovering from a car accident. This means he’s too weak to defend her or to be a bad spouse and that she’s the mildest kind of would-be adulteress you could get.

While Omar Epps does have an intimidating presence, the movie squanders his characters' potential. We learn he’s a hacker (or as far as this film is concerned, a computer sorcerer). This allows him to get whatever blackmail material he needs to try and coerce Ellie. Unfortunately, the movie is not twisted enough to do push boundaries, comment on people's behavior, try anything new, or do anything interesting.

You don’t even need to compare Fatal Affair to Fatal Attraction to understand why it's bad, though the similarities do almost make it amusing in a "you really didn't think we'd notice?" kind of way. Not amusing enough to enjoy on any level, even as something that might be “so bad it’s good”, mind you. We’ve seen dozens of movies like this and when your story doesn’t even have the daring of the audacious-free The Boy Next Door, why bother? (January 14, 2021)

Untitled #485, Peter Sullivan, 2000, MoMA: Drawings and Prints

The Judith Rothschild Foundation Contemporary Drawings Collection Gift Size: 26 x 41" (66 x 104.1 cm) Medium: Gouache on paper