La femme d’à côté
(François Truffaut, 1981)
Two ex-lovers wind up living next door
to each other with their respective spouses. Forbidden passions ensue.
In Grenobles,
France, Bernard (Gérard Depardieu)
lives a happy life with his wife Arlette (Michèle
Baumgartner) and son Thomas (Olivier
Becquaert) until one day new neighbors come to inhabit the house next to
theirs. Philippe (Henri Garcin) and
Mathilde (Fanny Ardant), are a newly
married couple and we soon discover that Bernard and Mathilde were lovers many
years ago.
François Truffaut was a man of Cinema, he was in love
with it and he was in love with telling stories about men who are in love. Much
like Alfred Hitchcock, Truffaut was
in a way living through his films, at the time he made The Woman Next Door, he was in couple with Fanny Ardant and just the way he shoots her in his film we know he
loved her to death. All of his films are about men who are passionately in love
with women.
With the
simple story of The Woman Next Door,
we kind of felt that the story was about the ultimate love story of a couple
that was together but they were too intense and too dangerous for each other to
be even close to one another. In a way, they are rejecting each other all along
the film. This is an intoxicating relationship and both lovers can’t live
without the love of the other lover but knows it is not good for themselves
respectively.
Truffaut’s
films are a testimony of his love for films but also to women. They are simply
told with effective but simple storytelling techniques. Anecdotes are sparsed
here and there about classic films like one about Tod Browning’s The Unknown.
Often under appreciated, The Woman Next
Door might be one of my favorite film from the director. The cinematography
by William Lubtchansky is beautiful
and intimist. I like the opening and closing shots following the ambulance.
The whole movie, even if widely inspired by American films, has a totally
European breath that the suburban France brought as the context of the reunion
of the two lovers but also as the unfolding of their story.
To me, La femme d’à côté is another Truffaut
film at his best and I wouldn’t be able to really rank it since I am a huge fan
of his movies. Nonetheless, it is near his greatest achievements without being
as influential or as groundbreaking as Les
400 coups and Jules et Jim.
Clearly, a five star film.
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