It's never simple with you, is it?
When romance flames out in a spectacular fashion, are both parties irrevocably burned by the experience or are they capable of rekindling their passion years later? That's the central question posed by François Truffaut's 1981 film The Woman Next Door, in which Gérard Depardieu's quiet life in a tiny French village is disturbed when ex-lover Fanny Ardant moves into the house across the street with her new husband (Henri Garcin). Depardieu, too, has settled down with a wife (Michèle Baumgartner) and small boy, but neither of their domestic arrangements can erase the undeniable attraction they still feel for each other.
In his defense, Depardieu does try to head things off at the pass by pretending to work late when Baumgartner invites their new neighbors over for dinner, and he steers clear of Ardant as much as he can without raising suspicion, but all it takes is one kiss in a parking garage (after she's cornered him at the supermarket) and it's only a matter of time before they start meeting in hotels and so forth. From that point on, all of their public interactions are marked by the increasing strain of keeping their affair secret, although local tennis club owner Véronique Silver is wise to it pretty much from the start. That makes sense since she's the character Truffaut and his co-writers Suzanne Schiffman and Jean Aurel chose to narrate the film. Based on her own experiences, she's well-versed in the fallout that doomed love affairs are prone to.