Francois Truffaut's story is about a very obsessive love affair to put it mildly. This film features two big French stars, a skinny Gérard Depardieu and Truffaut's love interest in real life, Fanny Ardant. The film's basic plot is about these two people who were involved in an intense relationship six years earlier. Now married to different people, they find themselves improbably living next door to each other in a small French town. Of course they resume their affair two timing their respective spouses. The film chronicles their descent into madness and death in their obsession with each other.
I'm not giving away the plot here since the film opens with an ambulance racing through the town from which it can be easily surmised that this story will end in tragedy. For the most part the film is well directed by Truffaut. One of his strong points as a filmmaker was getting good performances out of his actors and employing his knowledge of film making technique to tell a story.
However it seems that while Truffaut knows how to present their intense love story it just doesn't seem like the characters are a twosome the viewer can feel much sympathy for. It's seem clear that their relationship was basically about having sex since we never see or hear them talk about their emotions or feelings for each other. It doesn't help that their respective spouses seem like very reasonable and for the most part nice people compared to them. Their ultimate tragedy almost seems like a relief since we no longer have to seem them inflict emotional warfare on each other when they are not sliding into bed.
Sadly this was the second to the last film from Truffaut who died of a brain tumor about three years later. His final film with Fanny Ardant was a silly Hitchcock like comedy thriller. Still Truffaut's overall filmography is very impressive.
The film was written by Francois Truffaut, Suzanne Schiffman and Jean Aurel, the running time is 106 minutes.
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