General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

The Woman Next Door

The Woman Next Door (French: La Femme d'à côté) is a 1981 French drama directed by François Truffaut, starring Gérard Depardieu and Fanny Ardant as former lovers who become next-door neighbors in the countryside near Grenoble. It was released in France on 30 September 1981 and runs 106 minutes.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Director and writers	François Truffaut; screenplay and dialogue by Truffaut, Suzanne Schiffman, and Jean Aurel²
Principal cast	Gérard Depardieu (Bernard Coudray), Fanny Ardant (Mathilde Bauchard), Henri Garcin (Philippe Bauchard), Michèle Baumgartner (Arlette Coudray), Véronique Silver (Odile Jouve)²
Release	France, 30 September 1981; CNC visa no. 53588 dated 18 September 1981, classification "Tous publics"³
Production	Les Films du Carrosse (Paris) and TF1 Films Production; original distributor Gaumont²
Key crew	Cinematography William Lubtchansky; music Georges Delerue; editing Martine Barraqué²
Recognition	César nomination for Best Actress (Fanny Ardant, 1982)⁴
Restoration	Restored in 4K/HDR in 2022 by MK2 Films with the support of the CNC and ARTE France⁵

Spoilers

Story

Seven years before the film begins, Bernard Coudray and Mathilde Bauchard met, fell madly in love, and separated violently. Destiny reunites them when Mathilde, recently married to Philippe, moves into the house next door to the one occupied by Bernard, his wife Arlette, and their young son Thomas. Neighborly relations develop between the two couples, and everyone in the small community near Grenoble meets at the sports club run by Madame Jouve, who becomes witness and confidant to the two former lovers. Bernard and Mathilde seal a pact of non-aggression, and the drama follows who will break it and how far they will go.¹

The film opens with the arrival of an ambulance and a police car in a hamlet of the Dauphiné, as Mme Jouve (Véronique Silver), walking with a crutch and a prosthetic leg, begins to narrate what happened. Twenty years earlier, abandoned by a man, she had tried to kill herself by jumping from a window; she says she regrets nothing. She is therefore well placed to understand Mathilde, who before her marriage to Philippe had slashed her wrists in despair after a failed affair.⁶

Mathilde has kept her passion for Bernard. She watches for him and pursues him; he first evades her, then gives in. As lovers again, the two never love each other at the same time or in the same way, and the film moves toward an inevitable outcome through alternating emotional states.⁶ After a period of separation, Mathilde is treated for depression in a clinic. One night Bernard hears a noise in the now-empty neighboring house, finds Mathilde there, and embraces her. In a final embrace, Mathilde kills Bernard before taking her own life.⁷

The closing phrase, "ni avec toi, ni sans toi" ("neither with you nor without you"), became one of the best-known lines of French cinema.⁸

Production

Truffaut said the theme of bringing a man and a woman who had loved each other in the past face to face had been in his head for several years, on which he had been taking notes under the working title "On Track".⁹ The scenario was written for Fanny Ardant, whom Truffaut had discovered in Nina Companeez's television serial Les Dames de la côte; at a press conference in Florence, where he received the David di Donatello "Luchino Visconti" award, he said Ardant made him think of a woman from another country, without knowing which one.⁶ It was his second collaboration with Depardieu after The Last Metro (1980); Truffaut explained that after that ensemble film he wanted the opposite discipline, a tighter story built around a couple.¹⁰

The film was produced by Les Films du Carrosse and TF1 Films Production, with Gaumont as original distributor. William Lubtchansky was director of photography, with Caroline Champetier as camera operator; Georges Delerue composed the original music and Martine Barraqué edited.²

Reception and afterlife

The French classification board (CNC) issued visa no. 53588 on 18 September 1981 with a "Tous publics" rating, and the film opened in French cinemas on 30 September 1981.³ In Britain the BBFC classified the cinema version, at 105 minutes 36 seconds, on 30 November 1981 for Gala Film Dists Ltd, noting "moderate sex references and violence"; later home-entertainment versions were classified in 1995, 2002, and 2006.¹¹ In Spain, where it opened on 2 March 1989, it sold 350,861 tickets for €454,744.72.¹²

Fanny Ardant received a César nomination for Best Actress in 1982.⁴ The weekly Télérama called it "the most incandescent film of François Truffaut".¹ The film scholar Anne Gillain, author of Totally Truffaut (Oxford University Press, 2021), describes it as one of Truffaut's most perfect films, built on "memorial shots" that create an intensely claustrophobic atmosphere, and notes that Ardant's character experiences what Truffaut called "le trou noir", a mental collapse he had already depicted in Two English Girls and The Story of Adèle H.¹³

The film has remained in circulation. MK2 Films restored it in 4K/HDR in 2022 with support from the CNC and ARTE France, with color grading supervised by cinematographer Caroline Champetier.⁵ It returned to French theaters on 7 August 2024.⁸ Distribution rights in France have passed through several hands recorded by the CNC, including Gaumont (1990–1993), Soprofilms, AFMD, MK2 Diffusion, MK2 Films, Diaphana Distribution (2013–2021), Carlotta Films (2021–2025), and MK2 Films again from October 2025.³ As of late 2026 it streams on the Criterion Channel in the United States and is available on Blu-ray.¹⁴

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026