The Woman Next Door

Directed by François Truffaut, the 1981 French romantic drama La Femme d'à côté (The Woman Next Door) follows Bernard Coudray, who leads a quiet life near Grenoble with his wife and young son. His stability shatters when Philippe and Mathilde Bauchard move into the house next door: Mathilde is the woman with whom Bernard once shared a turbulent love affair years earlier. Though both try at first to ignore the coincidence, their old passion soon reignites, and the renewed affair grows into an obsession that endangers both marriages. As Mathilde sinks into emotional breakdown, the relationship spirals toward a fatal conclusion. Drawing on the medieval Tristan and Iseult legend but transposing it to a provincial middle-class setting, the film stars Gérard Depardieu and Fanny Ardant. It was Truffaut's last serious drama, followed only by the lighter Vivement dimanche!, and drew over a million admissions in France.