La femme d'à côté (1981)'s comments

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Siskoid

The theme is dangerous love in Truffaut's La femme d'à côté (The Woman Next Door), the kind of love you forget yourself in, the kind of love that turns to toxic obsession, the kind of love can lead someone to commit a desperate outrage. Bernard (Gérard Depardieu) is shocked one day to see an old flame, Mathilde (latter-day Truffaut muse Fanny Ardent), move next door with her husband. If only there'd been more than nine houses in the village, they might have still been able to avoid each other. What follows is a dance of avoidance and attraction, where they put everything on the line, then try to step away, with tragic consequences. As mirror to their story, the local tennis club owner, and our postmodern (but unfortunately too reliable) narrator, also did something desperate for love in her youth, and here gets to avoid a repeat performance in a way that Bernard and Mathilde can't. It's all quite interesting until the third act, where things get melodramatic and, frankly, taper out. The solution reminds me of The Soft Skin's, where it worked better.

3 years 2 months ago