Fatale

“Val’s entire role depends on harmful stereotypes of mental illness.”

Title: Fatale (2020)
Director: Deon Taylor 👨🏾🇺🇸
Writer: David Loughery 👨🏼🇺🇸

Reviewed by Anni Glissman 👩🏼🇺🇸🌈

Note: This review was commissioned by Lionsgate. The content and methodology remain 100% independent and in line with Mediaversity's non-commissioned reviews.

—SPOILERS AHEAD—

Technical: 3/5

Fatale, director Deon Taylor’s modern-day answer to the 1987 classic Fatal Attraction, stars Michael Ealy and Hilary Swank and promises to be a sexy, suspenseful noir from the jump. Ealy’s character, Derrick, is a former college basketball star turned pro sports agent living in a sleek house in the Hollywood Hills with his wife, Tracie (Damaris Lewis). His smooth charm and penchant for Lamborghinis and Louis Vuitton might be obnoxious save for Ealy’s charisma, which makes it easy to root for his character.

Of course, nothing is quite as it seems. Something darker lurks just below the surface, and we get our first hint as to what that might be when we see Derrick and Tracie arguing about the state of their marriage. Instead of pressing the issue further, Derrick travels to Vegas for a bachelor party where his wedding ring comes off as the group hits the club.

Enter Val (Swank), leaning against the bar in a little black dress, neatly dismissing the sleazy dude hitting on her as Derrick looks on. It’s around this time Fatale starts to go downhill. What’s supposed to be a hot hookup between Val and Derrick is missing electricity—likely due to Swank, whose wooden performance never comes to life over the course of the film despite her character’s unhinged behavior. It’s hard to understand why a man who’s never cheated on his wife would be so easily swayed now. It’s even harder to understand why, upon waking up the next morning to find Val has locked his phone in the hotel room safe, Derrick sleeps with her one more time before leaving.

As the plot unfolds, it quickly becomes clear there will be no shortage of bloody fights and suspenseful music. But for all the action, there’s not much in the way of actual intrigue. As his life begins to unravel, Derrick slides into a hapless stupor and seems completely unable to assess the events unfolding around him. Val re-enters his life with a bang, revealing herself as an LAPD detective when she shows up at his house after a break-in. Even thrust into this intense situation Val plays the jilted lover robotically, her voice flat and unconvincing as she teases Derrick. Fatale’s characters started the film with the potential for complexity, but by this point, it’s clear they won’t get it. As a result, the tension it began with breaks off before we’re anywhere close to resolution and it becomes increasingly difficult to care what happens next.

Gender: 2/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? NOPE

It’s easy to imagine a world in which Fatale is, if not a good film, at least a fun one. Had Swank and Lewis’ characters been given some depth and agency, the film’s twists and turns might have broken free from predictable patterns. Instead, each of the two female leads fall into stereotype.

Val is portrayed as the obsessive woman scorned. Her backstory is brought in as a secondary plotline where her alcoholism and other mental health issues are used as proof that she’s “crazy”—a worn-out and loaded charge leveled at women as a way to discredit them. It gets worse. We learn that in the darkest moments of her alcoholism, Val endangered her young daughter. She is, according to the film, an unfit mother. It’s only after the loss of her maternal rights that Val descends into a complete break from reality. Without her identity as a mother, the movie seems to suggest, a woman has nothing.

Tracie also falls into stereotype, this time as a cold and selfish “bitch.” Her only discernible personality trait is ambition. And as many women know, being called “ambitious” is rarely the compliment it might appear to be. The term comes with a slew of hidden meanings steeped in sexism; to be ambitious in this context is to be abrasive, self-absorbed, callous, and unlikeable. It’s the ultimate catch-22: A woman must be likable to succeed, but as soon as she wants power we no longer like her.

Race: 4/5

In contrast to its treatment of women, Fatale gets this category right. Diverse both in front of and behind the camera, the majority of its characters are Black and have a range of backstories and personality traits that go beyond generalizations. Director Deon Taylor, who is Black, doesn’t make race a focal point of the movie but he never ignores it either. The realities of being Black in America are acknowledged subtly throughout the film, from Derrick’s mother reminding him to be mindful of his reputation to how carefully he raises his hands to show police officers he’s unarmed—even as he struggles to stay standing and bleeds profusely from serious injuries. The film fails in many ways, but it is nice to see a genre piece that centers Black characters without limiting itself to stories of oppression.

It’s worth noting, however, that this courtesy doesn’t necessarily extend to the Black women in the film. For example, Tracie and Derrick’s mother (Denise Dowse) fall dangerously close to some offensive tropes that dehumanize Black women: Tracie as the hypersexual “jezebel” who carries on a torrid affair and schemes to kill her husband for his money, and Derrick’s mother as the “mammy” whose identity is so inseparable from her chaste maternalism that she’s not even given a name beyond “Derrick’s Mom” in the credits.

Deduction for Disability: -1.00

Val’s entire role depends on harmful stereotypes of mental illness. Fatale doesn’t even bother trying to treat her alcoholism or her unspecified other condition with empathy. In fact, it paints its female lead as captive to her disabilities and denies her any control over her own actions. In the end, the writers punish Val with the loss of both her family and any chance of a happy ending.

Mediaversity Grade: C- 2.67/5

Fatale boasts a strong premise, a charismatic lead in Ealy, and racial diversity that feels realistic. But it’s also a case study in why representation is about so much more than checking a box. The film commits the cardinal sin of forgetting that diversity is interconnected—that things like race, sex, class, ability, and sexuality work together to color our experience of the world—and so it fails to create convincing characters. This, along with Swank’s inability to connect emotionally, marks its downfall. Fatale could have been a pulpy, escapist noir. But ultimately, it’s anything but thrilling.

Like Fatale? Try these other psychological thrillers.

Grade: CLiDecember 18, 2020