The Woman Next Door 1981

In a quiet village near Grenoble, Bernard Coudray, Gérard Depardieu, enjoys a stable life with his wife Arlette Coudray, Michèle Baumgartner, and their young son Thomas Coudray, Olivier Becquaert, as they navigate the rhythms of small-town living. One day, a married couple, Philippe Bauchard, Henri Garcin, and Mathilde Bauchard, Fanny Ardant, move into the house next door, quietly shaking up the routine.

Bernard and Mathilde are stunned to meet again, recalling a stormy affair from years past when they were both single, an affair that ended with pain and regret. At first, Bernard avoids Mathilde, but a chance supermarket encounter rekindles long-buried desires. The two, outwardly good neighbours, begin to pursue an affair in secret, weaving a dangerous double life into their ordinary days while their families go about with routine civility.

As the affair deepens, the strain of balancing two households, two careers, and two secret loyalties becomes almost unbearable. It is Bernard who cracks first, publicly displaying his violent passion for Mathilde at a garden party, and then retreating. The two households struggle to move forward, trying to preserve appearances even as the affair casts a shadow over daily life.

But Mathilde, scorned and increasingly fragile, collapses publicly at the tennis club and is hospitalized with depression. When she is released, the situation has shifted: to distance themselves from Bernard, her husband moves them out of the village. The fragile equilibrium is broken one night when a bang from the shutter of the empty house next door rouses Bernard. He goes to investigate and finds Mathilde waiting in the darkness. What follows is intimate and devastating: they make love on the bare floor, and she pulls a gun from her handbag, shooting first Bernard and then herself, ending a brutal season of longing and consequences.